Heat conduction and radiative heat exchange in cellular structures using flat shell elements.

We developed in this paper a variational formulation of heat diffusion equation applicable to the flat shell context and cellular structures. For this purpose, we introduce the average mid-surface temperature field, through-the-thickness gradient and their dual generalized fluxes. Moreover, we introduced radiative heat exchange in the same way, which leads to a non-linear and unsymmetrical thermal discrete problem. The model performance is illustrated by several numerical examples concerning cellular structures like hollow clay bricks submitted to thermal loading. Thermo-mechanical coupling for such structure which is well adapted to the shell-like modelling approach, is presented in the elastic regime with the numerical results concerning temperature field and forces. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]