Hallo,
anyone has ever tried to perform an analysis reproducing the heating Joule effect with Creo Simulate Thermal?
I need to analyze the behaviour of a grounding device crossed by a given electric current: this current, for Joule effect, progressively heats the material during time until the equilibrium stady state is reached, that is when the temperatures are such that the total thermal Joule effect power (P=I^2*R) is entirely dissipated towards the environment.
I finally need to know the temperature distribution during the steady state.
If the model were simple, a rod for example, I could put an uniformly distributed heat source inside (load/unit volume) and define all the boundary conditions: but the problems are that:
- the model is an assembly -> presence of contact resistances (might the software idealize them as concentrated resistances?)
- the main component of the assembly is quite complex in its geometry (it's a wheel very similar to a car's alloy wheel), so the current does not flow uniformly like in a rod but branches off in its different portions (spokes) according to their respective electrical resistances. --> so I would ideally need the software to distribute the thermal load according to how much current flows where (--> higher the current, higher the joule effect) .
-the schematization of all the resistances of the wheel to perform a circuit analysis would be quite much time consuming.
I know that maybe I am asking to much to the software, but maybe there is a way to simplify the problem too.
thanks