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Thermal Solver
Contains thermal solver related guides, such as the TMG reference manual, thermal API guide, and error message list.
Thermal solver theory
Describes the theory and methods of the thermal solver.
Conduction methods
To model heat conduction, the thermal solver can use two finite volume methods, center of element method or element's center of gravity method, or the finite element method.
Finite volume methods
Element's center of gravity method
The element's center of gravity (CG) method creates conductances between the CG of the element and its boundary elements.
Conductance matrix for wedge and hexahedron elements

Thermal Solver
Contains thermal solver related guides, such as the TMG reference manual, thermal API guide, and error message list.
- Thermal solver guides
  Maya HTT's thermal solver is included in Simcenter 3D and in Simcenter Femap. This page contains links to thermal solver guides, which help you understand how the thermal solver works.
- Thermal solver theory
  Describes the theory and methods of the thermal solver.
  - Introduction
    This guide provides the theory and methods used by the thermal solver, including methods to calculate conduction, convection, and radiation, as well as modeling specific topics using the thermal solver.
  - Conduction methods
    To model heat conduction, the thermal solver can use two finite volume methods, center of element method or element's center of gravity method, or the finite element method.
    - Finite volume methods
      - Comparison between finite volume methods
        The thermal solver supports two finite volume conduction methods—the center of element method and the element's center of gravity (CG) method—to create conductive conductances from geometry.
      - Element's center of gravity method
        The element's center of gravity (CG) method creates conductances between the CG of the element and its boundary elements.
        Conductance matrix for beams
        Conductance matrix for triangles
        Conductance matrix for tetrahedra
        Conductance matrix for quadrilateral elements
        Conductance matrix for wedge and hexahedron elements
        Conductance matrix for pyramid elements
        Interface conductances
      - Center of element method
        The following table lists element types supported by the center of element conduction method and how the thermal solver identifies their center of location and sub-elements to create conductances between elements.
      - Axisymmetric elements
        This topic describes how axisymmetric shell and solid elements are defined in thermal analysis.
      - Orthotropic materials
        This topic explains how orthotropic materials are handled in thermal analysis, detailing the process for stretching shell and solid elements based on their thermal conductivities in different material directions and the subsequent calculation of conductance.
    - Finite element method
      The finite element method computes the temperature values at discrete points, solid nodes, by solving the heat conduction equation.
  - Convective heat transfer methods
    The thermal solver computes convection conductances for various geometrical configurations using correlations that depend on specified characteristic lengths, convective surfaces, and type of convection.
  - Radiation exchange methods
    Thermal radiation is a heat transfer due to electromagnetic radiation emitted by the surface of bodies due to their temperature.
  - Miscellaneous topics
  - References
- Thermal solver API guide
  Allows you to create or add functionality to enhance the thermal solver capabilities.

Conductance matrix for wedge and hexahedron elements

Wedge elements are divided into 3 pyramids and 2 tetrahedra by connecting the CG of each wedge to its corners. Hexahedra elements are divided into 6 pyramid sub-elements by connecting the CG of the hexahedron to its corners.

Examples show subdivision of wedge and hexahedron elements.

For each sub-element a conductance matrix is created that is similar to the procedure described for triangles and tetrahedra elements, with the following exceptions:

For each external face in wedges and hexahedra, conductances are computed at the CG of the face.
For each internal face, the boundary condition with matching heat fluxes is used.

The resulting size of the conductance matrix is 10 conductances for wedge elements and 15 conductances for hexahedral elements.

When the software uses the default setting, conductance between the CG and boundary elements are balanced by:

where A_i is the area of the boundary element.