Table of Contents

Thermal Load Elements (Metafor > v3593)

Since MR167 (Metafor v3593), there are two kind of thermal load elements depending on whether the load is applied on the volume element (volumetric source) of on the boundary of the elements.

All of them are implemented on the same framework and have the same options.

Element

The first step consists in defining an ElementProperties, as

prp = ElementProperties(typeEl)
prp.put(param, value)
prp.put(vecParam, values)
prp.append(vecParam, value)

where

typeEl desired element (for example Pressure[2|3]DElement - see below)
param name of the property associated to the element (e.g. NIP)
vecParam name of the vector property associated to the element (e.g. MATERIALS)
value value of the corresponding property (e.g. the Number of Integration Points)
values array of valuse of the corresponding vector property (e.g. material indexes)

Interaction

The interaction used for thermal boundary/source elements is a LoadingInteraction. It is defined as:

load = LoadingInteraction(no)
load.push(gObject1)
load.push(gObject2)
...
load.addProperty(prp)
interactionset.add(load)

where

no number of the Interaction
gObject1, gObject2 meshed geometric entity where the boundary conditions are applied (one part of the boundary or on part of the mesh)
prp Properties of boundary condition elements to be generated

Source Elements are defined on Volumic mesh where Boundary Elements are defined on boundary of the mesh.

Element Types

TmBoundary2DElement - TmBoundary3DElement - TriangleTmBoundary3DElement

Boundary elements have to be defined in the LoadingInteraction on the boundary of the mesh.

Parameters

Name Description Dependency
STIFFMETHOD Method used to compute the stiffness matrix
= STIFF_ANALYTIC : analytic matrix (default)
= STIFF_NUMERIC : numerical matrix
-
MATERIALS Array of numbers of ThermalBoundaryMaterial to consider -
NIP Number of integration points by direction (default : 2)
for TriangleTmBoundary3DElement : Total Number of integration points (default : 1)
-

Tm2Boundary2DElement - Tm2Boundary3DElement - TriangleTm2Boundary3DElement

Boundary elements have to be defined in the LoadingInteraction on the boundary of the mesh where the TM2 formalism is used (second order thermal field on a first order geometrical mesh)

Parameters

Name Description Dependency
STIFFMETHOD Method used to compute the stiffness matrix
= STIFF_ANALYTIC : analytic matrix (default)
= STIFF_NUMERIC : numerical matrix
-
MATERIALS Array of numbers of ThermalBoundaryMaterial to consider -
NIP Number of integration points by direction (default : 3)
for TriangleTm2Boundary3DElement : Total Number of integration points (default : 3)
-

TmSource2DElement - TmSource3DElement - TriangleTmSource2DElement (missing TetraTmSource3DElement)

Source elements have to be defined in the LoadingInteraction on a volumetric mesh.

Be careful that they can be associated to any ThermalBoundaryMaterial that can have no physical meaning (e.g. defining a ConvectionMaterial in a mesh not on its surface), but could be a work around to apply heat to a model… Up to now, there a no physical consistency test…

Parameters

Name Description Dependency
STIFFMETHOD Method used to compute the stiffness matrix
= STIFF_ANALYTIC : analytic matrix (default)
= STIFF_NUMERIC : numerical matrix
-
MATERIALS Array of numbers of ThermalBoundaryMaterial to consider -
NIP Number of integration points by direction (default : 2)
for TriangleTmSource3DElement : Total Number of integration points (default : 1)
-

Tm2Source2DElement - Tm2Source3DElement - TriangleTm2Source2DElement (missing TetraTmSource3DElement)

Source elements have to be defined in the LoadingInteraction on a volumetric mesh where the TM2 formalism is used (second order thermal field on a first order geometrical mesh)

Be careful that they can be associated to any ThermalBoundaryMaterial that can have no physical meaning (e.g. defining a ConvectionMaterial in a mesh not on its surface), but could be a work around to apply heat to a model… Up to now, there a no physical consistency test…

Parameters

Name Description Dependency
STIFFMETHOD Method used to compute the stiffness matrix
= STIFF_ANALYTIC : analytic matrix (default)
= STIFF_NUMERIC : numerical matrix
-
MATERIALS Array of numbers of ThermalBoundaryMaterial to consider -
NIP Number of integration points by direction (default : 3)
for TriangleTm2Boundary3DElement : Total Number of integration points (default : 3)
-