An approach to coupled, multi-physics thermal analysis

摘要

We describe an approach to coupled, multi-physics thermal analysis using the SIERRA framework. SIERRA is an object-oriented, unstructured grid framework for multi-physics analysis that provides support services such as mesh adaptivity, parallel communication, linear solvers, and data transfers between computational mechanics applications that may be coupled using independent finite element meshes. In our applications to date, a heat transfer analysis code has been separately coupled with a fluid mechanics and a structural mechanics code. Three-way coupling is not precluded by the framework design, but has not yet been attempted. This paper emphasizes the algorithms for thermal analysis. We first present an overview of the heat transfer model, which includes diffusion, enclosure radiation, and chemistry. Next, a brief description of the abstractions employed by the SIERRA framework is given. We next present some details of the coupling procedure and show numerical results obtained by coupling the thermal analysis with other mechanics applications. In each case, the two applications are loosely coupled within the time-integration algorithm.