A load-transfer coupled physics analysis is the combination of analyses from different engineering disciplines that interact to solve a global engineering problem. For convenience, this chapter refers to the solutions and procedures associated with a particular engineering discipline as a physics analysis. When the input of one physics analysis depends on the results from another analysis, the analyses are coupled.

Some cases use only one-way coupling. For example, in a thermal-stress problem you perform a thermal analysis and then transfer temperatures to the structure for stress calculations. In practice, the thermal expansion is small enough so that the temperature solution is not affected. Thus, there is no need to iterate. (See Example Thermal-Stress Analysis.)

A more complicated case is the induction heating problem, where an AC electromagnetic analysis calculates Joule heat generation data which a transient thermal analysis uses to predict a time-dependent temperature solution. The induction heating problem is complicated further by the fact that the material properties in both physics simulations depend highly on temperature. This analysis requires iteration between the two simulations with bidirectional or two-way coupling so that the results of each analysis will be read and used as inputs to the other analysis. (See Example Induction Heating Analysis.)

The term load-transfer coupled physics refers to using the results of one physics simulation as loads for the next. If the analyses are fully coupled, results of the second analysis will in turn change some input to the first analysis (two-way coupling). Boundary conditions and loads can be categorized as follows:

Mechanical APDL enables you to solve analyses involving these typical physics: