Learning Forum

[Diego Sanchez]

I am performing a transient thermal analysis on a mechanical model that has a lot of contacts. When converting it to a thermal model using the command, I get a number of warnings regarding my contact (and target) elements, saying they are not being converted to anything. I assume this means the contact surfaces are being treated as adiabatic. However, since I am working on steel, the heat transfer through contacts is definitely significant. I only found this PowerPoint Presentation (ansys.com) on the topic, not really any guide on how to control the heat transfer properties in contacts. Is there a simple way to tell ansys how to treat the contacts during a thermal transient?

[Aurojyoti Prusty]

Hi,

 In Ansys Mechanical APDL, you can specify thermal contact conductance using the Contact Properties dialog. The thermal contact conductance (TCC) is a coefficient that defines the conductive heat transfer between two contacting surfaces, and it can be set as a constant value or as a function of temperature, pressure, time, and location using a table. The formula for conductive heat transfer is q = TCC x (Tt - Tc), where q is the heat flux per area, TCC is the thermal contact conductance coefficient, and Tt and Tc are the temperatures of the contact points on the target and contact surfaces, respectively. 

Hope this helps,

Thanks

Aurojyoti.