Vertical/Horizontal Thermal Gradient applied on a Bridge quads model

SOFiSTiK
1

Hello everyone,

I would like to apply a vertical and/or a horizontal thermal gradient on a bridge (steel box girders). The problem I’m currently facing is to find the equivalence of DTZ load type that works well for BEAM elements (to apply a vertical thermal gradient) for QUADS elements. Would someone see a way of applying such non-linear loads to QUADS elements?

I’ve thought of doing it kind of ‘manually’ by computing the different plates temperatures and then, applying for each a corresponding uniform thermal load, but that doesn’t seem to be an efficient way of doing it. (Perhaps this method is not even correct because it doesn’t respect the continuity of the gradient).

I would be happy to hear from you,
Best regards

2

Please read chapter 3.39 in CSM manual (command TEMP). I think this is what you need.

3

Thanks for your response @JE170969

It seems to be exactly what I was looking for.

4

The TEMP command is precisely what I was looking for, thanks. I followed the code shared in the t_beam_bridge_excentric.dat teddy example.
However, the ZVAR MODE seems more appropriate for my study, and I cannot find any other example than the one in the CSM Manual.
Here the lines I copied:

+prog CSM urs:5
head Temperature ZVAR

TEMP LC 80 TN 44 DT -10 MODE ZVAR

CTRL FILE ‘temp2’ $ filename for the created input file
END
+apply “$(NAME)_temp2.dat”

It returns an error while I tried to run this code:
Non-valid input at position: 6

Would you have some advice on how to face this error?
Thanks in advance