Thermal Expansion (for Materials)
Use the Thermal Expansion subnode to add an internal thermal strain caused by changes in temperature.
Thermal expansion can be modeled for Linear Elastic Material, Linear Elastic Material, Layered, Nonlinear Elastic Material, and Hyperelastic Material. For Linear Elastic Material, Layered, the thermal expansion can be applied to arbitrary layers in a multilayered membrane when the Composite Materials Module is available.
See also the discussion in Layered and Nonlayered Membranes.
Shell Properties
This section is present only when the Thermal Expansion node is used under Linear Elastic Material, Layered.
Select the layer or layers for which this thermal strain contribution is to be added.
Table 7-7: 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.
If the Input type differs between layers, you will need to add several Thermal Expansion nodes with different layer selections. If only the material data values differ, you can use a single Thermal Expansion node with From material. The data for each layer is then received from global Layered Material nodes.
If the same layer is selected in two Thermal Expansion 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 Thermal Expansion 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
Membrane>Linear Elastic Material>Thermal Expansion
Membrane>Linear Elastic Material, Layered>Thermal Expansion
Membrane>Nonlinear Elastic Material>Thermal Expansion
Membrane>Hyperelastic Material>Thermal Expansion
Ribbon
Physics tab with Linear Elastic Material, Linear Elastic Material, Layered, Nonlinear Elastic Material, or Hyperelastic Material node selected in the model tree:
Attributes>Thermal Expansion