SS-T: 4050 Coupled Structural Thermal Analysis

Create coupled structural thermal analysis in SimSolid for a piston head.

Purpose
SimSolid performs meshless structural analysis that works on full featured parts and assemblies, is tolerant of geometric imperfections, and runs in seconds to minutes. In this tutorial, you will do the following:
  • Learn to create coupled structural thermal analysis.
Model Description
The following model file is needed for this tutorial:
  • ThermalStructual.ssp


Figure 1.
This file has the following specifications:
  • Material is set to Steel for all parts.

Open Project

  1. Start a new SimSolid session.
  2. On the main window toolbar, click Open Project .
  3. In the Open project file dialog, choose ThermalStructural.ssp
  4. Click OK.

Create Thermal Analysis

In the main window toolbar, click Thermal Analysis > Thermal steady-state.
The new analysis appears in the Project Tree as a Thermal branch.

Apply Convection

  1. In the Project Tree, click on a Thermal analysis branch to open the Analysis Workbench.
  2. On the workbench toolbar, click the (Convection) icon.
  3. In the dialog, verify the Face radio button is selected.
  4. Select the faces shown in orange in Figure 2.
    1. In the dialog, select the Add tangent faces check box.
    2. In the modeling window, select one of the cup's outer faces and each of the two indentations.
      The face is highlighted along with all adjacent faces.


      Figure 2.
  5. For Ambient temperature, enter 420.
  6. For Convection heat transfer coefficient, enter 500.
  7. Click OK.
  8. Repeat steps 2 through 7 to create a second thermal convection load, using the faces and values shown in Figure 3.


    Figure 3.
  9. Repeat steps 2 through 7 to create a third thermal convection load, using the faces and values shown in Figure 4.


    Figure 4.

Create Structural Linear Analysis

On the main window toolbar, click Structural Analysis > Structural linear.
The new analysis appears in the Project Tree under Design study 1 and the Analysis Workbench opens.

Create Immovable Support

  1. In the Analysis Workbench, click Immovable Support .
  2. In the dialog, verify the Faces radio button is selected.
  3. In the modeling window, select the faces shown in orange in Figure 5.


    Figure 5.
  4. Click OK.

Link Thermal to Structural

  1. In the Analysis Workbench, click (Thermal load).
  2. In the dialog, select the Link to thermal analysis results radio button.
  3. Click OK.

Edit Solution Settings

  1. Double-click on Solution settings: for Thermal 1.
  2. In the Solution settings dialog, for Adaptation select Global+Local in the drop-down menu.
  3. Click OK.
  4. Right mouse click on solution settings and select Apply to all analyses in the current design study to apply the global+local adaptation to all other analyses in the study.

Run Design Study

Solve all analyses in the design study.

  1. In the Project Tree, select the Design study 1 branch.
  2. Click Run All Analyses
  3. In the Solver Manager, verify all analyses are selected.
  4. Click Solve.
SimSolid runs all analyses in the design study branch. When finished, a Results branch for each analysis appears in the Project Tree.

Review Combined Results

  1. On the Structural 1 Analysis workbench toolbar, click (Results plot).
  2. Select Displacement Magnitude.
    The Legend window opens and displays the contour plot.


    Figure 6.
  3. On the Analysis Workbench toolbar, click (Results plot).
  4. Select Von Mises Stress.
    The Legend window opens and displays the contour plot.


    Figure 7.