Specifying thermal conductivity

You can use the Edit Material dialog box to specify isotropic, orthotropic, or fully anisotropic thermal conductivity. For more information, see Conductivity.

  1. From the menu bar in the Edit Material dialog box, select ThermalConductivity.

    (For information on displaying the Edit Material dialog box, see Creating or editing a material.)

  2. Click the arrow to the right of the Type field, and specify the directional dependence of the thermal conductivity.

  3. Toggle on Use temperature-dependent data to define conductivity as a function of temperature.

    A column labeled Temp appears in the Data table.

  4. Click the arrows to the right of the Number of field variables field to increase or decrease the number of field variables on which conductivity depends.

  5. Enter the applicable data in the Data table:

    Conductivity

    Isotropic conductivity, k. (Units of JT−1L−1 θ−1.)

    k11, k22, and k33

    Three values for orthotropic conductivity, k11, k22, and k33. (Units of JT−1L−1 θ−1.)

    k11, k12, k22, k13, k23, and k33

    Six values for anisotropic conductivity, k11, k12, k22, k13, k23 and k33. (Units of JT−1L−1 θ−1.)

    Temp

    Temperature.

    Field n

    Predefined field variables.

    You may need to expand the dialog box to see all the columns in the Data table. For detailed information on how to enter data, see Entering tabular data.

  6. Click OK to close the Edit Material dialog box. Alternatively, you can select another material behavior to define from the menus in the Edit Material dialog box (see Browsing and modifying material behaviors, for more information).