Thermal Load in Structural Analysis

Dency Dela Cruz

Hello!

I am working on a model of a skid that is anchored down onto a concrete foundation with anchor bolts. In my model, I placed immovable constraints at the anchor bolt locations. I also have a variant where I put a spring stiffness instead to represent the bolted connection.

I am looking to extract reaction loads at the anchor locations under different loading conditions to inform the bolt selection process. One of the cases I am considering is thermal loads on the skid when it undergoes temperature gradients. In my analysis, I'm considering a thermal gradient of 50 deg C.

My problem is that I get ridiculous values reaction forces (~1,000 kN in shear) at the anchor bolts when I apply the thermal load in my analysis. Even with a spring stiffness (approx. 1E9 N/m shear, 1.6 E9 N/m tensile), the reaction forces I get are still ridiculously high. My understanding is that the value you put in the "Apply uniform temperature" box below is the thermal gradient. 

Please can anyone help explain how the thermal load option in SimSolid works or if I might be doing something wrong? The documentation on this feature seems to be very limited.

Thank you.

Gouthami Polina_22137

Hello,

would you be able to share the model with us? You can write to gpolina@altair.com if it is a confidential model.

Thanks

Gouthami