Flow/Thermal Effects

If an unrestrained body is subjected to a change in temperature, it will expand or contract freely as it is heated or cooled. The change in temperature causes strains but no stresses. If the body is prevented from expansion or contraction freely, stresses are induced. The induced stresses are equivalent to those required to deform an equivalent unrestrained body similarly.

It is important to include the contribution of temperature changes to stresses for restrained models. The coefficient of thermal expansion material property (KX) is required to consider this effect. You need to specify the reference temperature associated with the stress-free condition.

The program uses the acquired temperatures for two purposes:

• thermal loading

• temperature-dependent material properties for each element where the temperature for each element is calculated by averaging the temperatures of its nodes.

For proper acquisition of temperature and pressure loads from Flow Simulation, the active study and the Flow Simulation study should be associated with the same configuration.

On the Flow/Thermal Effects tab, you set the following options:

Thermal Options

Select one of the following options:

• Input Temperature. Considers the prescribed temperatures defined for the model.

When using this option, make sure to specify temperatures on components or shells. Specifying temperatures on the boundary only may not be practical since a temperature of zero is assumed at all other locations. If you define temperature on boundary only, you may need to create and solve a thermal study first to compute temperatures at all nodes.

• Temperatures from thermal study. Reads the temperature values from a thermal study. Select a Thermal study and the Time step number (for a transient thermal study).

• Temperatures from Flow Simulation . Reads the temperature values resulting from a completed Flow Simulation on the same configuration from a file. Select the desired result file (*.fld) that has been generated by Flow Simulation . model name, configuration name, and time step number associated with the specified file are displayed. This option is not available for 2D simplification studies.

Reference temperature at zero strain. Sets the temperature at which no strains exist in the model.

The model is subjected to a temperature change DT = Input temperature -  Reference temperature at zero strain.

Fluid Pressure Options

• Include fluid pressure effects from Flow Simulation . Reads the pressure results from a Flow Simulation result file. This option is not available for 2D simplification studies.

Refer to the SolidWorks Flow Simulation online help for the procedure to create the *.fld file.

For nonlinear studies....

To include thermal effects in the active study...

To import temperature and/or pressure from SolidWorks Flow Simulation...