Thermal properties in truss elements

[Paolo Di Re]

Dear All,
I was running the attached file in FEAP 8.4, which is a simple linear elastic truss with a uniform temperature variation DT = -600.

I expect the truss to shorten because I'm assigning T0 = 600 under MATErial, which is what I want, but something goes wrong. The truss shorten too much. If I check the displacement of node 2, it seems the model is using a value of the coefficient of linear thermal expansion alpha = 1e-5*E, where E is the Young's modulus.

What am I doing wrong?

[Prof. R.L. Taylor]

Yes there is a bug!  The following changes can be made:

1. In ./elements/material/inmate.f -  where d(3) is set change to read:
             if(oned) then
               d(3) = alp(1)
             else
               d(3) = alp(1) + alp(2) + alp(3)
             endif

2. In .elements/material/small/elas1d.f:  Change d(47) back to d(3).

Hopefully this fixes your problem.

[Paolo Di Re]

Thank you very much. Everything works great now!