Thermal Expansion (for Materials)

Use the subnode to add an internal thermal strain caused by changes in temperature.

Select the layer or layers for which this thermal strain contribution is to be added.

Table 6-10: Layer Selections; Thermal Expansion
Selection	Use All Layers	Selection of Individual Layers
Boundary	Same as parent selection when the node is added.	When Use all layers is not selected. Only a subset of the layers selected in the parent can be selected.

If the differs between layers, you will need to add several nodes with different layer selections. If only the material data values differ, you can use a single node with . The data for each layer is then received from global nodes.

If the same layer is selected in two nodes being active on the same boundary, the second definition will override the previous.


	Thermal strains are proportional to the temperature, while structural strains are computed from the gradient of the displacement field. It is good practice to match the discretization order of thermal and structural strains. When adding a Thermal Expansion subnode, and the temperature field is computed by another physics interface (often the Heat Transfer in Shells interface); use a discretization one order lower for the temperature field than what is used for the displacement field.

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All other settings for the node are described in the documentation for Thermal Expansion (for Materials) in the Solid Mechanics interface.

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For a general description of layer and interface selections, see The Shell Properties and Interface Selection Sections.

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You can provide parameters for the expansion with a through-thickness variation by explicitly or implicitly using expressions containing the extra dimension coordinate as described in Using the Extra Dimension Coordinates.

Location in User Interface

Context Menus

Ribbon

Physics tab with , , or node selected in the model tree: