Keyword type: step
This option is used to define temperatures and, for shell and beam elements, temperature gradients within a purely mechanical *STEP definition. *TEMPERATURE should not be used within a pure thermal or combined thermomechanical analysis. In these types of analysis the *BOUNDARY card for degree of freedom 11 should be used instead.
Optional parameter are OP and AMPLITUDE. OP can take the value NEW or MOD. OP=MOD is default and implies that thermal load in different nodes is accumulated over all steps starting from the last perturbation step. Specifying the temperature for a node for which a temperature was defined in a previous step replaces this last value. OP=NEW implies that the temperatures are reinitialised to the initial values. If multiple *TEMPERATURE cards are present in a step this parameter takes effect for the first *TEMPERATURE card only.
For shell elements a temperature gradient can be defined in addition to a temperature. The temperature applies to nodes in the reference surface, the gradient acts in normal direction. For beam elements two gradients can be defined: one in 1-direction and one in 2-direction. Default for the gradients is zero.
The AMPLITUDE parameter allows for the specification of an amplitude by which the difference between the actual and initial temperature is scaled (mainly used for dynamic calculations). Thus, in that case the values entered on the *TEMPERATURE card are interpreted as reference values to be multiplied with the (time dependent) amplitude value to obtain the actual value. At the end of the step the reference value is replaced by the actual value at that time, for use in subsequent steps.
Temperature gradients are not influenced by the AMPLITUDE parameter.
First line:
Following line:
Example: *TEMPERATURE N1,293. 300,473. 301,473. 302,473.
assigns a temperature T=293 to all nodes in (node) set N1, and T=473 to nodes 300, 301 and 302.
Example files: beam8t, beam20t, beamnlt, beamt4.