Thermal Mechanical Fatigue (TMF) in Additive Suite Software — Lesson 9

Are there any tools available that specifically address material calibration for thermal mechanical fatigue (TMF) applications?

The short answer is that the Mechanical Additive tool does not account for the phase change between solid and liquid phases.

There is no enthalpy vs. temperature property used in transient thermal analysis. In the static structural run, we set a new layer, which is already solid, then allow it cool between layers. If you want to set the new layer temperature to a higher value, the liquid-solid phase change can be captured, but you would need to update the material properties to capture it. Our sample properties generally do not go into that range. This could be accomplished more vigorously with state variables and UPFs.

Having said that, we do offer a "relaxation" temperature (TRELAX) field as part of the AMMAT command, at which the past history is lost (i.e., plastic strains reset to zero):

AMMAT, MATPART, TMELT, TRELAX

This might give you a result that is close enough, but you would have to validate it.