Transient Heating and Thermal Shock Analysis for Free

Temperature and stress distribution of a stop valve under thermal shock from a hot fluid flow. (Image courtesy of SimScale).

SimScale, the freemium cloud-based simulation software, has just added advanced thermomechanical analysis capabilities to its repertoire.

The new simulation capabilities allow engineers to study how mechanical parts will react to thermal and mechanical loads such as:

Transient heating/cooling
Fire exposure
Thermal shocks
Shrink fit

On the SimScale blog, David Heiny, co-founder of SimScale, wrote, “We’ve seen a high demand for thermal and coupled thermomechanical simulations among SimScale users, which is why these capabilities were significantly enhanced with the latest platform update.”

Shrink fit simulation assessing the stresses between a tool and a holder. (Image courtesy of SimScale.)

Other mechanical and thermal analysis features were streamlined into a single workflow. Some of these features include:

Temperature-dependent material properties
Frictional contact
Dynamic effects
New boundary conditions: remote force and follower pressure

Another new thermal analysis improvement comes in the form of a new boundary condition for fan cooling, heating and HVAC simulations. The fan boundary condition improves the accuracy of representing a fan at an inlet or outlet of a flow domain. Users can now specify the pressure versus flow curve using a table input.

SimScale Community gives you free access to the software if you post your results to the public. (Image courtesy of SimScale.)

Finally, users will notice improvements to the recently-launched SimScale Community portal. The improvements help users find simulation examples that might interest them. When searching for public projects, new search filters include:

Number of views, likes or copies
Creation date
Modification date

“Since the release of the SimScale Community six weeks ago, more than 2,000 public projects have been created,” wrote Heiny. “They are a great resource for learning and reusing projects for your own purpose. Hundreds of new simulations are added each week.”

The additions to SimScale are far from revolutionary in the industry. Many other software options were able to perform these types of multiphysics simulations for quite some time. What is great for engineers is that SimScale is offering this simulation package for free.

As long as you join the community and post your results publically, you have free access to the software. However, for those who wish to protect their IP, that is where the premium access comes in. To learn more, follow this link.