Advanced thermal stress analyses are achieved through the direct coupling of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers providing an advanced multi-physics analysis capability. Many innovative companies are now using this multi-physics analysis approach in thermal stress analyses to more accurately quantify reality and further optimise their products.

The accuracy of a structure stress or deformation analysis results is directly dependent on how representative applied boundary conditions are of reality. The Multi-physics thermal stress analysis approach has an advantage over standard FE thermal stress analyses in that wall heat transfer coefficients and their local variations over surfaces are directly calculated by the coupled CFD solver rather than based on empirical calculations and results therefore reflect reality more accurately.

This multi-physics approach has benefits for those applications where heat transfer is either non-uniform or difficult to calculate empirically where the product geometry is complex. Static or transient thermal cyclic stressing from flows can also be analysed to evaluate thermal fatigue where the changing thermal boundary conditions are calculated using CFD and are exported to FEA for the thermal stress/ fatigue analysis.