Iterative and direct solution methods in thermal network solvers

Abstract Direct and iterative solution sre described and test problems are presented to illustrate the difference in the workings of direct and iterative solutions for thermal analysis. The problems are modeled using PATRAN as a pre- and post-processor and are solved with P/Thermal as the solver. It is shown that for ‘stiff’ thermal problems direct solution converges much faster than iterative one and problems with severe nonlinearities, large number of nodes, iterative approach is more efficient.