Understanding thermal correlation analysis

The thermal correlation is a calibration process that helps you find the best thermal solution that minimizes the error between the computed and target temperatures at different locations and times.

In the optimization process, TMG Correlation uses some parameters, called design variables, to minimize a function of these parameters, called the objective function.

To set up the thermal correlation analysis, you specify:

• The reference data that contains temperatures at specific locations, called sensors, and their time stamps. This data can contain thermocouple data from experiments or industrial applications, or temperature data from theory, third-party simulations, or an existing Simcenter 3D simulation.

• The design variables that the optimizer modifies, such as the heat transfer coefficient in the Thermal Coupling simulation object or the heat pickup in a Thermal Stream load.

• The convergence criterion that specifies the value at which the objective function of the optimization will satisfy the convergence requirement.

The calibration process of a thermal correlation analysis consists of a series of iterations that adjusts the design variables within the specified bounds, until it converges on a design cycle that fulfills the convergence criterion. The calibrated solution has boundary conditions with parameters and expressions calibrated during the optimization.