Calculate thermal expansion from room temperature to 4K

Using SimScale Thermal
1

Hey,

I want to simulate the thermal expansion of a custom part I designed in AutoDesk. It’s a 17mm long copper tube.
The repo is here: Thermal Contraction Copper by lkon | SimScale

That is, I want to know by how much the cylinder contracts if reducing the temperature from 293.1 K (room temperature) to 4K (cryogenics).

The thermal expansion coefficient of copper is strongly temperature dependent. To account for this, I’ve added a table ro the material properties of copper.

My remaining workflow is:

  • Assign a fixed displacement to the bottom face (mechanical boundary constraint)
  • Assign a (time-dependent) thermal load to the entire volume (4K load at the final time step) - again by using a table
  • use a transient analysis
  • assign mesh
  • solve

Unfortunately, in my simulation the copper expands, even though it should contract.

Can someone confirm / help me with this simulation?

1 Like
2

Hi @lkon, thanks for posting at our forum!

I’d like to say your project looks awesome. It seems like the part is initially contracting

image
image1618×821 81.4 KB

and then starts to expand again at around 53K, which should be unexpected:

image
image1626×818 80.9 KB

I kindly ask for your patience as we’ll make it a topic of internal discussion between our peers :slight_smile:

Best,
Igor