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why changing variables in linear elastic material equations when simulating the thermal actuator
Posted 30 apr 2019, 16:46 GMT-4 Structural Mechanics Version 5.4 2 Replies
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I am a freshman of this software and I just start the first thermal actuator simulation following COMSOL tutorial.
There is a step called Linear Elastic Material 1 and some variables are changed as the following figure. What is the intention of this step? I didn't see this step in other tutorials.
Thanks.
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Hi,
From a pedagogical point of view, this shows how you as a user can modify the equations used to create for example stiffness matrices and load vectors.
From a techincal point of view, this is a way to include thermal expansion by modifying the expressions for how strains are computed in the case that your license does not have it as a built-in feature. If you have a licence for the Structural Mechanics module or the MEMS module, then it is of course much more convenient to use the built-in Thermal Expansion feature. There are other variants if the same tutorial showing this, as discussed in https://www.comsol.com/blogs/performing-a-multiphysics-analysis-of-a-thermal-microactuator/.
Regards,
Henrik
Henrik Sönnerlind
COMSOL
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Totally explained my question, Thank you.