Reply To: Need help with moving heat source on uneven surface with apdl

[dlooman]

So the laser is just heating the tip of the tooth?  Volumetric heat generation doesn't seem like an appropriate way to model the surface heating of a laser.  If you create a very fine mesh of the tooth tip area you could select nodes on the surface based on their theta coordinate in a cylindrical system.  You could update the theta values over time:

csys,1   ! global cylindrical 

nsel,s,ext  ! nodes on the surface

nsel,r,loc,x,mid_tooth,top_tooth+increment

nsel,r,loc,y,theta,theta+small_angle  ! needs to select at least two nodes for a face to be defined

sf,all,hflux,value

allsel

time,...

solve

reselect

next time 

solve

soo