topic Re: Thermal Conductivity in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

Thermal Conductivity

RichardLee3904 — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 17:34:31 GMT

I need to set a thermal conductivity for a material higher than 5000 W/(m-K). It's to simulate a heat pipe which effectively has a much higher thermal conductivity. There seems to be a limit in the material editor that will not allow values higher than 5000. Is there a way to override this limit?

Re: Thermal Conductivity

josef.kucera — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 09:28:15 GMT

Hi @RichardLee3904,

I was able to reproduce it as well on my side. I reported a bug to our bug tracking system.

Thank you for letting us to know.

Please stay tuned, we'll let you to know how it progresses...

Regards,

Josef

Re: Thermal Conductivity

josef.kucera — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 12:17:44 GMT

Hi @RichardLee3904,

For now you may try this workaround: 1. Know the material type; 2. Change the definition XML; 3. Use it

Take flooring Bamboo for example,

Right check the materials and choose Edit – Advance - Physical

2. Open Asset browser

Know the asset type

4. Quit Fusion and Go to Fusion installation folder, path like: C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\Common\Material Library\16021701\slib\resource\Structural, open Basic folder and BasicStructuralUI.xml

5. Change the value to higher than 5000

6. Open Fusion and use Bamboo, it should work now

Regards,

Josef

Re: Thermal Conductivity

RichardLee3904 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 15:34:18 GMT

Thanks Joseph, this is what I was looking for! I figured there was a file somewhere that could be edited, but I had not idea where to look. I'll try this and let you know how it turns out.

Thanks again

Richard Lee

Re: Thermal Conductivity

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 20:46:17 GMT

Just as an aside, there is a lower limit as well. It is 1.000E-02 W/(mC). I also need to exceed this limit. I will try the work around you have posted here, but it would be nice to not have either a lower or upper limit.

Thanks.

Jesse

Re: Thermal Conductivity

zlsiegel — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 15:20:15 GMT

Does anyone know how to implement this solution in Inventor 2017? The method of editing the BasicStructuralUI.xml file seems like it would apply to all Autodesk products, but it doesn't appear to have applied to Inventor. I did successfully get this to work in Fusion 360, incidentally.

Re: Thermal Conductivity

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 08:14:05 GMT

I tried this. The Value is shown to be changed but in the Simulation, i get the same result as if i would simulate with 5k W/mK (compared to 100k W/mK)

Re: Thermal Conductivity

John_Holtz — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 12:39:04 GMT

Hi @Anonymous . Welcome to the Fusion forum.

You post seems to be about a different topic than this original post. I suggest that you create a new post and provide some details about your situation.

Are the results exactly the same (to the precision reported by Fusion) or almost the same (different to some decimal point)?

If the results are exactly the same, then it sounds like the conductivity is not being changed in the simulation model. (Changing the maximum limit as described in this original post does not change the value in the analysis.)
If the results are slightly different, then it is working.

For example, maybe your design is not limited or influenced by the high thermal conductivity. Copper (a good conductor of heat) has a conductivity of 385 W/m/K, so starting with a conductivity of 1000 is almost 3 times higher. Perhaps switching to a material with a conductivity 13 times higher than copper is not changing the design that much. You design may be limited by other input, such as the conductivity of an insulator, or the convection loads applied.

Re: Thermal Conductivity

mufassar.waheedLSESA — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 20:19:52 GMT

Hello @John_Holtz ,
sorry I thought since it is related to this topic it would be ok to post here.
You were right with your assumption. My design was not directly related to the thermal conductivity of the Heatpipe.
I have made a test to verify your assumption and will post the results. Changing from 5k W/mK to 100k W/mK does make a huge difference.
Should I delete my last comment to not confuse members who might stumble on this topic?

Thanks for the help!