|
SAMCEF Thermal takes into account heat transfer due to conduction, convection and radiation for 2D/axi-symmetric and 3D structures. Both steady state and transient analysis can be performed using fixed or automatic time stepping. For the conductive modelling a library of 3D/axisymmetric solid and 3D structural elements is available allowing for orthotropic temperature dependent properties. The structural elements allow the definition of multi-layer composite shell and pipe elements.
A variety of boundary conditions is available, e.g. from a simple imposed flux to complex interactions such as mutual radiation and temperature dependent contact conditions. The mutual radiation algorithm has an automatic obstacle detection algorithm plus shading in the presence of a solar flux. Additionally numerical controllers can be used, either by selecting a predefined controller in SAMCEF Thermal, or by a user defined controller using the interface with MATLAB/SIMULINK.
For post-processing a number of commands are available to list and display temperatures, conductive flux and applied flux on the whole or part of the structure. These commands can thus serve to calculate the thermal balance of part of the structure.
Furthermore, SAMCEF Thermal provides the structural analysis (SAMCEF Linear and SAMCEF Mecano) with the appropriate temperature distribution for a thermo-mechanical analysis. The meshes used in the thermal and the structural analyses do not have to be identical, and interpolation of temperatures between meshes is performed. | 
