In this paper, a simple model is presented. It allows to give an approximation of the thermal contact resistance for a solid-solid contact showing several levels of defects (flatness, roughness,...) and including therefore several scales in the constriction of the flux lines. According to this approach, the thermal contact is modeled using three intrinsic resistances (interstitial fluid resistance, resistance of asperities, constriction resistance). This allows a direct calculation, only valid for low levels of the ratio of the local contact over non-contact areas. Then the assumption is made that the constriction phenomena are independent from the resistance scale. Finally, a periodic distribution is considered for the surface defects. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Ltd.