Learning Forum

[Adeleine Cabrera]

Hi. I'm doing a transient structural analysis with thermal load (from transient thermal analysis) as a boundary condition. I have turned on Large Deflection. When I run the analysis without the thermal load, the solution and results are okay. But, when I analyze with the thermal load, there is a convergence problem and, based on 4 Netwon-Raphson, the problematic area is where the applied loads are. I have maximized the number of elements and nodes already and, I have tried increasing the substeps but it still doesn't work.

I actually did the same for other with the same geometry, engineering materials, and boundary coniditions but with a different thermal load. They worked but, not for one thermal load.

Can anyone help me to solve this?

[peteroznewman]

Hi Adeleine,

Check the coefficient of thermal expansion for all materials and make sure you use the correct units for temperature when you are entering a CTE value.

Check that all the materials and bodies are assigned the same reference/Environment temperature.

Try running the Static Structural model with a Thermal Condition and assign a 1 degree temperature increase to all bodies.  For example, if the reference temperature is 20 C, assign a Temperature of 21 C to all bodies and see if you get a reasonable thermal expansion and reasonable stress values.

Regards,
Peter