Abaqus/CAE User's Guide  


12.11.1 Defining electrical conductivity

If you are using a material in a coupled thermal-electrical or coupled thermal-electrical-structural analysis, you must define the material's electrical conductivity. For a time-harmonic eddy current analysis, the material's electrical conductivity must be used to define the electromagnetic response of a conductor. You can specify electrical conductivity that is isotropic, orthotropic, or fully anisotropic. See the following sections for more information:

To define electrical conductivity:

  1. From the menu bar in the Edit Material dialog box, select Electrical/MagneticElectrical Conductivity.

    (For information on displaying the Edit Material dialog box, see “Creating or editing a material,” Section 12.7.1.)

  2. Click the arrow to the right of the Type field, and specify the directional dependence of the electrical conductivity.

  3. Toggle on Use frequency-dependent data to define electrical conductivity that varies with frequency.

    A column labeled Frequency appears in the Data table.

  4. Toggle on Use temperature-dependent data to define electrical conductivity as a function of temperature.

    A column labeled Temp appears in the Data table.

  5. Click the arrows to the right of the Number of field variables field to increase or decrease the number of field variables on which electrical conductivity depends.

  6. Enter the applicable data in the Data table:

    Conductivity

    Isotropic electrical conductivity. (Units of CT–1L–1–1 .)

    s11(E), s22(E), and s33(E)

    Three values for orthotropic electrical conductivity, , , and . (Units of CT–1L–1–1.)

    s11(E), s12(E), s22(E), s13(E), s23(E), and s33(E)

    Six values for anisotropic electrical conductivity, , , , , , and . (Units of CT–1L–1–1.)

    Frequency

    Frequency in cycles/time.

    Temp

    Temperature.

    Field n

    Predefined field variables.

    You may need to expand the dialog box to see all the columns in the Data table. For detailed information on how to enter data, see “Entering tabular data,” Section 3.2.7.

  7. Click OK to close the Edit Material dialog box. Alternatively, you can select another material behavior to define from the menus in the Edit Material dialog box (see “Browsing and modifying material behaviors,” Section 12.7.2, for more information).