Draft. This manual is new and still growing. If something here does not match what you see in the software, the software is right — tell us and we will fix the page.
Thermal analysis
Where it is
Not a setup-tree node. Embedded in the application.
Controls
ANALYSIS
Solver
- Control: choice (
ComboRow) - Options:
code_aster,elmer
Two solvers, one case. They agree to four decimal places on the worked example, so a disagreement is worth looking at rather than averaging. Elmer needs its own component installed and converts the mesh first; code_aster reads it directly.
Analysis type
- Control: choice (
ComboRow) - Options:
Steady,Transient
The in-app guidance depends on the case:
- How the temperature gets there, and how long it takes. Needs a density and a heat capacity.
- Where the temperature ends up once nothing is changing any more.
Start from
- Control: value (
ValueField) - Unit: K
- Value modes: none (plain entry)
- Shown when:
ThermalState.analysis === "Transient"
The whole body at t = 0. Without it the solve starts from absolute zero, which converges and answers a different question.
Run for
- Control: value (
ValueField) - Unit: s
- Value modes: none (plain entry)
- Shown when:
ThermalState.analysis === "Transient"
Time step
- Control: value (
ValueField) - Unit: s
- Value modes: none (plain entry)
- Shown when:
ThermalState.analysis === "Transient"
HEATING FROM A CURRENT
Joule heating
- Control: choice (
ComboRow) - Shown when:
root.emStudies.length > 0
One-way: the current heats the part and the part getting hot does not change the current. The electromagnetics study has to have been RUN — this reads the file it wrote.
HEAT SOURCES
＋ Add a heat source
- Control: action (
ToolButton2)
READINESS
Write every
- Control: value (
ValueField) - Unit: steps
- Writes:
sif/Output Intervals - Value modes: none (plain entry)
How many time steps pass between writes. Every step on a long transient is a great deal of disk for a result nobody reads at that resolution.
Time-scheme order
- Control: value (
ValueField) - Writes:
sif/BDF Order - Value modes: none (plain entry)
BDF order for a transient run. 1 is backward Euler - stable and heavily damped, so a coarse step flattens the peak the study was run to find. 2 is the usual remedy.
Conditional and repeated groups
Per item in ThermalState.sources
repeated once for every entry in ThermalState.sources
Region
- Control: choice (
ComboRow)
Remove
- Control: action (
ToolButton2)
Power density
- Control: value (
ValueField) - Unit: W/m³
- Value modes: none (plain entry)
Per cubic metre, not total. A 5 W part in a 10 cm³ volume is 500 000 W/m³.
Problems reported against this step
The application reports no problems against this step.
… marks a value the application computes at run time, so the source carries no fixed text for it.