About Shell Sections

A shell section defines a structure in which one dimension (the thickness) is significantly smaller than the other two dimensions (and in which the stresses in the thickness direction are negligible). For conjugate heat transfer (CHT) simulations, shell sections are appropriate when you can approximate the heat flux in the shell normal direction with a linear temperature distribution.

See Also
Defining a Shell Section

Shell sections are applied to surfaces, which—from a geometric standpoint—have no thickness; a thickness is assigned to the surface geometry as part of the shell section definition. During the simulation the shell faces are considered to be located half the thickness distance above and below the surface geometry.

Shell Sections in Fluid Simulations

If your fluid simulation has no thermal factors, shell sections behave like wall boundaries.

For CHT simulations, shell sections act as regular CHT interfaces supplemented with a linear temperature profile. To compute the heat flux in the direction normal to the shell, the app solves the energy equation along the shell surface to obtain the temperature distribution associated with the normal heat flux. You can apply a material to the shell that has isotropic and anisotropic properties.

Thermal shells are subject to the following limitations in CHT simulations:

  • You cannot specify the Dirichlet boundary conditions on any part of the shell, and the shell edges are integrated with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions.
  • You can define only one shell within a shell section, you cannot specify volumetric heat sources on the shell section, and the cylindrical material orientation is not supported.