NEW THERMAL LINK FINITE ELEMENT FOR FGM CONDUCTORS

Juraj Hrabovský - Juraj Paulech - Justín Murín - Vladimír Kutiš - František Janíček

   A new effective thermal link finite element is presented in this paper, which is suitable for thermal analysis of the conductors made of a functionally graded material (FGM) with spatial continuous variation of material properties, continuously distributed gener-ated heat along the element length and continuous variation of the convection from the element surface. Numerical experiment will be done concerning calculation of the thermal fields of the FGM conductor. The solution results will be discussed and compared with those obtained using a very fine mesh of the 3D solid finite elements of the FEM program ANSYS.

Keywords: functionally graded material, thermal analysis, heat convection, FGM link finite element, ANSYS, Mathematica

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