Finite-element formulations for the thermal stress analysis of two- and three-dimensional thin ractor structures

This paper describes finite-element formulations for the thermal stress analysis of LMFBR structures. The first formulation is applicable to large displacement rotation problems in which the strains are small. For this formulation, a general temperature-dependent constituent relationship is derived from a Gibbs potential function and a temperature dependent yield surface. The temperature dependency of the yield surface is based upon a temperature-dependent, material-hardening model. The model uses a temperature-equivalent stress-plastic strain diagram which is generated from isothermal uniaxial stress-strain data. A second formulation is presented for problems characterized by both large displacement-rotations and large strains. Here a set of large strain hypoelastic-plastic relationships are developed to linearly relate the rate of stress to the rate of deformation. The temperature field is described through time-dependent values at mesh node points; the temperature fields in each element are then obtained by interpolation formulas. Hence, problems with both spatial and temporal dependent temperature fields can easily be treated. The above developments were incorporated into two ANL developed finite-element computer codes: the implicit version of STRAW and the 3D Implicit Structural Analysis Code. STRAW is a two-dimensional code with a plane stress/plane strain beam element. The 3D Implicit code has a triangular flat plate element which is capable of sustaining both membrane and bending loads. To insure numerical stability both codes are based on an iterative-incremental solution procedure with equilibrium checks based on an error in energy