change in Shape functions

- October 10, 2019 at 5:54 pm
  
  mi130
  Subscriber
  
  Hi
  
  I want to carry transient thermal analysis in Ansys. I don't want to use very fine meshes for an accurate solution, instead, I want to use coarse mesh grids but want to change the element shape function by adding some extra information to it. Anybody can guide how can I easily make changes in the element shape functions in ANSYS?
- October 10, 2019 at 8:15 pm
  
  peteroznewman
  Subscriber
  
  In Mechanical (or Mesh) you can click on the Mesh branch of the outline. In the Details window is Element Order. The default is Program Controlled. You can choose Linear or Quadratic, which changes the shape function of the elements. You can't select higher orders, so you do need to refine the mesh in areas of high gradient of a result quantity to get good accuracy.
- October 14, 2019 at 7:36 am
  
  mi130
  Subscriber
  
  hi peteroznewman,
  
  Thank you for your help, actually, I want to define my own shape functions rather than using the standard shape functions defined in ANSYS. Do you have any idea how can I define my own shape functions?
- October 14, 2019 at 12:50 pm
  
  peteroznewman
  Subscriber
  
  Write your own FEA program, that's what I did when I took an FEA Theory course in college.
- October 18, 2019 at 5:31 pm
  
  mi130
  Subscriber
  
  Writing my own FEA program would not be that efficient and versatile as ANSYS or any other commercial code. In fact I do have my own FEA code but I want to take advantage of the available smart codes.