The "super" - refinement

The gridding (discretization) algorithm of AnTherm subdivides the component model under consideration into cells which will be thermally balanced thereafter. The calculation algorithm creates for each such cell the heat balance equation and then solves the system of such equations. The solution results describe temperature field with values in the middles of cells.

During the evaluation AnTherm will provide further refinement of this results. Here, by using heat balance and interpolation algorithms, AnTherm uses temperatures at cell centres to calculate temperatures at centres of cell edges, centres of cell surfaces and at each cell corner.

As the nice result of such refinement the provisioning of much higher number of node values is available for the evaluation, hence the evaluation can be much more precise thereafter - for the two dimensional case the number of temperature nodes is fourfold the original cell count and in three dimensional case it is eightfold!

For example, the calculation with 1.000.000 (one million) balanced cells provides results of thermal balance equations at more than 8.000.000 (eight million) points! - and the operation is accomplished in surprisingly short computation time. In most cases in less then one minute!

The most beneficial effect of this refinement can bee seen in that the temperatures at any material boundary can be provisioned that way! Material boundaries of special interest exist at the junction of different materials and, more importantly, at all surfaces of the component considered for analysis.

Evaluating temperatures at component surfaces is essential to the evaluation and analysis of thermal bridges. Therefore the super refinement shall be seen as substantial calculation step.

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