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[erik.anderson]

I have a simple interface set up in Ansys Mechanical. It is a metal plate being bolted to a stiff base with a gasket sandwiched in between. The compression of the gasket is related to its thermal contact conductance using empirical models. 

I solve a structural model to determine the contact pressure distribution of the compressed gasket. Is there a way to feed the structural result into a steady state thermal model? I need a way to relate the spatial distribution of the gasket contact pressure (or compression) to thermal conductance in a thermal model.

 

I know thermal-to-structural is possible, but for this application thermal expansion is not important. Rather, this is  a problem of deformation-dependent thermal behavior. 

[Chandra Sekaran]

You can do coupled thermal-structural analysis. For example you could add a coupled field static analysis as shown in picture below and include thermal and structural physics in it. Documentation on this is availabel at:

https://ansyshelp.ansys.com/account/secured?returnurl=/Views/Secured/corp/v232/en/wb_sim/ds_coupled_field_static.html?q=coupled%20field%20static

https://ansyshelp.ansys.com/account/secured?returnurl=/Views/Secured/corp/v232/en/ans_cou/Hlp_G_CouTOC.html

[Aniket]

There is no direct or simple method to assign thermal conductivity based on location. Thermal conductivity is a material property. It must be associated with a material id number which is assigned as an element attribute. You might be able to write a macro that loops through the entire model one element at a time and perform the following steps.

Find the element centroid

Find the thermal conductivity at that location

Assign unique mat id number for each element

Create a set of material properties for each mat id

 

This approach will result in a complicated model with many matids but it might work as you intend to use

-Aniket

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