Evaluating Heat Flow through a Surface — Lesson 10

How can I get average heat flow through a surface in a thermal analysis?

If there is a temperature/convection boundary condition on the surface in your model, you can probe the reaction at the corresponding boundary condition to get the heat rate through the particular surface.

If there isn't any boundary condition, the following APDL commands need to be used in a command snippet inserted in the "Solution" branch:  

resume
/post1
set,last
cmsel,s,my_sele1  !select nodes on surface on which the heat flux values are to be integrated to find the total heat rate
esln !select the corresponding elements forming the surface
fsum !sums the nodal force and moment contributions of elements
*get,my_heat_tot,fsum,0,item,heat !retrieves the total heat flow
allsel,all !select everything again 

Here, "my_sele1" is a named selection of a surface through which the total heat rate will be computed.