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A Two-Way Computer Interface Between Thermal and Structural Analyses: GetGo User s Manual

Published

Author(s)

Dat Duthinh, Abed M. Khaskia

Abstract

One of the recommendations of the National Construction Safety Team for the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster (NIST NCSTAR 1, 2005) is to enhance the performance-based capability of available computational software to predict the effects of fires in buildings, for use in the design of fire protection systems and the analysis of building response to fires. One general purpose software used in the investigation, for example, is capable of performing thermal and structural analyses, among other things. In its standard package, the transfer of temperatures from a thermal model to a structural model, or the transfer of deflections from a structural model to a thermal model can only be performed with compatible elements, i.e., solid to solid or shell to shell. The present document seeks to remedy this situation: even though most thermal analyses are performed with solid elements, most structural analyses are not, as they make widespread use of beam and shell elements. The document develops a procedure that allows temperatures anywhere within a solid thermal model to be transferred as thermal load input to a wide variety of common beam cross sections and shells with various number of layers in a geometrically compatible structural model. The document also develops a method to transfer deflections from a beam and shell structural model back to a solid thermal model, a step that is especially important in intense fires of long duration, when structural deflections may be significant enough to affect the thermal regime or damage the insulation. Although this computer interface was implemented for one particular software package, the methods developed are general and can be adapted to other, similar software.
Citation
NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR) - 7462
Report Number
7462

Keywords

beam, finite-elements, insulation, interface, shell, solid elements, strain, structural analysis, thermal analysis

Citation

Duthinh, D. and Khaskia, A. (2017), A Two-Way Computer Interface Between Thermal and Structural Analyses: GetGo User s Manual, NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD (Accessed March 29, 2024)
Created February 19, 2017