Thermal Expansion Thermal Gradient

I have been getting more questions lately about thermal stress in Inventor Nastran, so I created 2 videos to share to outline the process. This video cover the set up when there will be a thermal gradient in the part or assembly - running a thermal analysis first and then bringing those temperatures in to stress analysis. See also the video 'Thermal Expansion Uniform Temperature Distribution' for the process when there is no temperature gradient.

[@navalfa7291]

Thanks Mike. I work for a company that makes pressure vessels and heat exchangers. Historically we used to use Abaqus for our stress analysis. But due to budget constraints, we are moving to Inventor Nastran as the only FEA option. Your videos are great help for me in making that shift.

[@OPrime9]

Is there a way to print out a report showing what the thermal expansion values are, and the locations of the max/min deflections?

[@mikefiedler2039]

Apologies for the late reply - but the answer to your question is yes. (1.) When you generate the report (right mouse click on Analysis in the Model Tree - Generate Report), presuming that you have Min/Max Markers turned on - when the program takes various images for the report, Displacement should be one of those images. The Min/Max markers should display location and value. (2a.) You can get all of the displacement values printed to the *.OUT file. If you double click on the analysis type (e.g. Linear Static) in the Model Tree, this should bring up the Analysis form. The default 'Output Options' pull-down you'll see is set to Plot by default. If you change that setting to Print, it will write all the displacements to the .out file. Note that if you have many nodes in the model, this can make for a very large out file. help.autodesk.com/view/NINCAD/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-10BFD564-87F7-465B-B3BB-05F61E291DFA (2b.) If there is a smaller region of interest, it might be better to use the XY plot and select an edge of the geometry (for instance) or a few select nodes and then after plotting the values you can export that as a .csv file (which can open in Excel). help.autodesk.com/view/NINCAD/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-3B982345-7F90-455E-894C-0B20F5D32A09