Heat Flux or Source

What Does a Heat Flux or Source Do?

A heat flux load is applied to a node or surface that will either supply heat or take away heat during the analysis.
The direction of the heat flow is controlled by the sign on the value in the Magnitude field. A positive value will cause heat to be supplied to the model. A negative value will cause heat to be taken away from the model.

Apply Surface Heat Flux

If you have surfaces selected, you can right-click in the display area and select the Add pull-out menu. Select the Surface Heat Flux command.

If the heat flux is being applied to plate elements, and you want it to be applied to both sides, activate the Apply load to both sides check box. Since there is no change through the thickness of a plate element, applying a load on both sides will be equivalent to applying twice the load on one side.

If you are performing a transient heat transfer analysis, select the load curve that will be applied to the heat flux in the Load Curve drop-down box. If you select Load Curve 0, the value will be kept constant throughout the analysis. Press the Curve button to define a load curve in the Load Curve Editor, or use the Setup Model Setup Parameters Analysis Parameters dialog box.

Note: The heat flux is scaled by the Convection multiplier on the Multipliers tab on the Analysis Parameters dialog.

Apply Nodal Heat Source

If you have vertices selected, you can right-click in the display area and select the Add pull-out menu. Select the Nodal Heat Source command.

For a nodal heat source, specify the desired magnitude of the heat source. The nodal heat sources are not scaled by any of the multipliers on the Multipliers tab on the Analysis Parameters dialog.

For a transient analysis, specify the load curve that will control the magnitude of the nodal heat source throughout the analysis. The load curve must be defined in the Analysis Parameters dialog. Specify the time at which the load curve will be applied to the nodal heat source. Until this time, the nodal heat source will have no effect on the model. At the activation time the load curve will start at the factor at time 0 and continue until the analysis duration has ended.

Tip: See the comments under the Application of Loads and Constraints at Duplicate Vertices heading on the Loads and Constraints page for information about how nodal loads are applied at duplicate vertices.