Multiphysics Thermal Analysis - ProductGuy2/Multiphysics-welding-examples GitHub Wiki

This example describes the use of thermal contact in Marc. Thermal contact provides the ability to take thermal conduction and small gaps into account. This can be used in a pure thermal analysis, but also in analyses with multiple physics types, like a thermal-structural coupled analysis. Contact bodies which are almost touching each other can be considered to be in near contact. Different physical heat transfer processes can be simulated for this type of contact, such as convection, natural convection, radiation, or distance dependent heat transfer.

The example described here is a pipe which is heated from the inside. The pipe runs through a housing, where the dimensions are chosen so that pipe and housing initially do not touch. When the pipe heats up, it expands and, at a certain moment, it comes in contact with the housing. To analyze this, a coupled thermal-structural analysis is performed. When the pipe is almost touching the housing, a distance dependent heat transfer is considered. Due to symmetry, an axisymmetric analysis is performed.

See Pipe.proc in the repo