VARIATIONAL APPROACH TO SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS IN THERMOELASTICITY

For a nonlinear elastic structure subjected to thermomechanical boundary conditions the first variation of an arbitrary stress, strain, displacement, and temperature functional corresponding to variation of material parameters and shape of external boundaries is derived by using direct and adjoint approaches. Both the steady-state and transient cases are considered and the analysis is applicable to both analytical and numerical techniques. Two simple examples are presented to illustrate these two approaches.