Thermal stresses in plane elasticity: Numerical solutions based only on harmonic functions (Q1088431)

A theoretical treatment is outlined allowing solution of thermal stress problems in plane elasticity by using only numerical methods suited to solving - in 2 D - the Laplace equation. Only one type of element matrix (supposing for the sake of simplicity F.E.M.s are used) and only one mesh would thus be required, both for the determination of the thermal field and of the displacement/stress field. The numerical solutions required in the plane domain of interest entail, consequently, only one variable per node in place of two. Even if numerous ''unit'' solutions are required in order to impose arbitrary boundary conditions, this reduction of nodal variables allows to spend less computation time in solving linear systems at least for problems of a certain extent.