In this hands-on session it will be demonstrated how to set up basic requirements for a sequentially and fully coupled thermal mechanical analysis. For this purpose, you are going to use Abaqus to analyze a flat rectangular plate with a circular hole at its center in a state of plane stress. Both the thermal and mechanical responses are sought.  The step-by-step procedure for the finite element models development and the analysis of problem involves the following nine chapters:

-          The first chapter demonstrates the process of solid modeling and automatic/ruled mesh generating using the geometric meshing approach.

-          The next three chapters 2, 3 and 4 involves the preparation of a steady state and transient heat transfer model including different physical heat transfer processes such as convection and surface radiation. This thermal analysis model developed first will form the basis of the structural analysis model.

-          In the chapter 5, you will perform a mechanical linear static analysis using the general static procedure. The plate is fixed at the bottom left corner, constrained in the vertical direction at the bottom side and subjected a tensile distributed load on the upper side. It is generally known that a stress concentration exists around the hole. Both the deformed structure and the stress distribution need to be determined.

-          The chapter 6 deals with a thermoelastic stress analysis in which a predefined temperature field is specified using the results obtained in the heat transfer analysis.

-          The problem then become more complicated when the material is changed from an isotropic to one presenting a spatially varying thermal expansion, this will be solved in the chapter 7, showing how to create manually an element field distribution using the Keywords editor.

-          The last two chapters 8 and 9 focus on practical aspects of the metal plasticity model. Fully coupled thermal-stress analysis will be performed using the perfect plasticity behavior law with temperature-dependent yield stress. 

Please download the below attached file named 'Abaqus-insight_workshop-1.zip' containing the whole workshop with its all nine chapters.

The problems studied in this Abaqus workshop are picked up from the tutorials introduced in the Cast3m training courses provided by the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). It is shown that for each model both Abaqus and Cast3m reproduce exactly the same numerical results. The Cast3M courses as well as associated lectures and model files can be found here: http://www-cast3m.cea.fr/index.php?xml=formations . A permission was obtained from the Cast3M technical staff to publish this post on the Simulia learning community.