Thermal expansion material stiffness

Toon
Toon Altair Community Member
edited October 2020 in Community Q&A

Hi

 

I am doing some test calculations in optistruct. I have a very thin plate with basically no mechanical strength and stiffness, attached to a plate with moderate strength and stiffness. When I heat up both plates I get deformations due to thermal expansion which are expected. Now when I only heat up the very thin plate, the deformations due to thermal expansion are higher compared to the previous case (so also the thick plate now has higher deformations even if it is not thermally expanding).

 

This made me wonder the following: is material stiffness is neglected in a thermal expansion analysis?

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Answers

  • FaroukM
    FaroukM Altair Community Member
    edited May 2020
    Altair Forum User said:

    This made me wonder the following: is material stiffness is neglected in a thermal expansion analysis?

    In thermal analysis, the stiffness matrix (\sigma = C . \epsilon)does not affect the strain (deformation). Which is not the case when you perform the coupling thermal-structural analysis.

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