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why changing variables in linear elastic material equations when simulating the thermal actuator

Posted Apr 30, 2019, 4:46 p.m. EDT Structural Mechanics Version 5.4 2 Replies

Peng Zhang
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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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2 Replies Last Post May 9, 2019, 3:02 p.m. EDT
Henrik Sönnerlind COMSOL Employee

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Posted: 5 years ago May 2, 2019, 2:20 a.m. EDT
Updated: 5 years ago May 2, 2019, 2:20 a.m. EDT

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

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Henrik Sönnerlind
COMSOL
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 . Regards, Henrik
Peng Zhang
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Posted: 5 years ago May 9, 2019, 3:02 p.m. EDT

Totally explained my question, Thank you.

Totally explained my question, Thank you.

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