About Heat Fluxes

Heat flux defines a flow of heat into or out of a surface on your model.

A heat flux definition consists of two components:

  • Transmission surface
  • Magnitude

A heat flux represents a region of your model that is subject to external heating or cooling effects. A positive heat flux magnitude indicates that heat is flowing into your model across the transmission surface. A negative heat flux indicates that heat is flowing out of your model across the transmission surface.

You can define three types of heat flux distribution:

Heat Flux Description
Uniform value One value is used throughout the model.
Mapped spatial data A mapping table defines the value at each location, with a separate value for all areas outside the mapped region.
User-defined A DFLUX user subroutine linked to the analysis case defines the heat flux distribution.