Study of transient coupled thermoelastic problems with relaxation times

A new hybrid numerical method based on the Laplace transform and control volume methods is proposed to analyze transient coupled thermoelastic problems with relaxation times involving a nonlinear radiation boundary condition. The dynamic thermoelastic model of Green and Lindsay is selected for the present study. The following computational procedure is followed for the solution of the present problem. The nonlinear term in the boundary condition is linearized by using the Taylor’s series approximation. Afterward, the time-dependent terms in the linearized equations are removed by the Laplace transform technique, and then the transformed field equations are discretized using the control volume method with suitable shape functions. The nodal dimensionless temperature and displacement in the transform domain are inverted to obtain the actual physical quantities, using the numerical inversion of the Laplace transform method. It is seen from various illustrative problems that the present method has good accuracy and efficiency in predicting the wave propagations of temperature, stress, and displacement. However, it should be noted that the distributions of temperature, stress, and displacement can experience steep jumps at their wavefronts. In the present study, the effects of the relaxation times on these thermoelastic waves are also investigated.