Discussion Forum

Short-Story:
I need to extrude a variable defined on a boundary, into a sub-domain perpendicular to the boundary it is defined on. (I can work with extruding the boundary in a specific direction if it is significantly easier than perpendicular to the boundary) I cannot find any examples of how to do this in 4.0a. I can only find examples where models extrude to different geometries not to a different region of the same domain.

Longer version for those who are interested:
I'm creating a 2D-thermal stress model, where two solid domains, initially separated by a gaseous domain come into contact due to thermal expansion. In this model, for heat transfer purposes, everything is meshed, including the gaseous domain. A small contact offset is used to prevent collapse of the gaseous domain.

Now I would like to vary the heat transfer coefficient in the gaseous domain locally, when contact occurs on the boundaries of the domain to account for the improved heat transfer due to solid-solid contact. This is complicated by the fact that not all parts of the boundary come into contact at the same time. Therefore, for this to work I need to know which parts of the corresponding sub-domains represent areas of contact and which do not. IE I need to extrude the contact pressure variable from the boundary, into the domain so that I know which parts of the sub-domain represent solid-solid contact and which parts of the domain represent gaseous heat-transfer.

Does anyone have any models that might help me figure out how to do this?