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Procedia CIRP 62 (2017) 340 – 345

10th CIRP Conference on Intelligent Computation in Manufacturing Engineering - CIRP ICME '16

Decoupling of fluid and thermo-elastic simulations on machine tools using

characteristic diagrams
Janine Glänzela,*, Steffen Ihlenfeldta,b, Christian Naumann C.a, Matthias Putza,c
a
Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU, Reichenhainer Straße 88, 09126 Chemnitz, Germany
b
Technische Universität Dresden, Helmholtzstraße 7a, 01069 Dresden, Germany
c
Technische Universität Chemnitz, Reichenhainer Straße 70, 09126 Chemnitz, Germany

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 371 5397-1492; fax: +49 371 5397-61492. E-mail address: janine.glaenzel@iwu.fraunhofer.de

Abstract

Thermo-elastic effects are one of the major reasons for positioning errors in machine tools. Next to friction and waste heat from drives, the heat
exchange with the machine’s surroundings influences the temperature field inside the machine tool significantly. The thermal parameters
necessary to describe this heat transfer can be obtained through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. This paper presents a new
method aimed at decoupling these CFD simulations from the thermo-elastic simulations in order to provide the heat transfer parameters quickly
and efficiently for transient environmental conditions. This is done by defining a suitable set of load scenarios for the CFD simulations,
clustering the resulting parameters with radial basis functions and interpolating them using characteristic diagrams.
©
© 2017
2016The TheAuthors. Published
Authors. by Elsevier
Published B.V. This
by Elsevier B.V.is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the International Scientific Committee of “10th CIRP ICME Conference".
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 10th CIRP Conference on Intelligent Computation in Manufacturing Engineering
Keywords: Machine tool; Simulation; Thermal effects; Characteristic diagrams; Radial basis functions

1. Introduction calculated from each temperature field and the displacement

Machine tool deformation occurs during operation due to
waste heat from motors and frictional heat from guides, joints
and the tool, while coolants act to reduce this influx of heat.
Additional thermal influences come from the machine tool's
environment and foundation. This leads to inhomogeneous,
transient temperature fields inside the machine tool which
displace the tool center point (TCP) and thus reduce
production accuracy and finally the product quality [1].
Next to approximation strategies such as characteristic
diagram based [2] and structure model based correction [3],
the most reliable way to predict the TCP displacement is via
thermo-elastic finite element (FE) simulation. A CAD model
of a given machine tool serves as the basis for this approach.
On it an FE mesh is created. After establishing the partial
differential equations (PDEs) describing the heat transfer
within the machine tool and with its surroundings, FE
simulations are run in order to obtain the temperature fields of
the machine tool for specified load regimes. Using linear
thermo-elastic expansion, the deformation can then be
of the TCP read from this deformation field, see [4].
The accuracy of this latter approach depends on the correct
modelling of the heat flux within the machine tool and the
exchange with its surroundings. In order to calculate the
correct amount of heat being exchanged with the
environment, one may use known parameters from well-
established tables. However, if the surrounding air is in
motion or otherwise changing, computational fluid dynamics
(CFD) simulations are required to accurately determine these
transient parameters. This two-step approach makes realistic
thermo-elastic simulations particularly complicated and time-
consuming. Methods aiming at real-time thermo-elastic
simulations based on model order reduction must therefore
rely on the inaccurate predetermined parameter sets [5]. This
could be helped if all the necessary CFD simulations could be
run in advance and supplied to the thermo-elastic models
when they are needed. This paper presents such an approach
which employs high-dimensional characteristic diagrams.
Characteristic diagrams are well suited for mapping
combinations of air flow parameters (e.g. air temperature,

2212-8271 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 10th CIRP Conference on Intelligent Computation in Manufacturing Engineering
doi:10.1016/j.procir.2016.06.068
 Janine Glänzel et al. / Procedia CIRP 62 (2017) 340 – 345 341

flow direction and velocity, air pressure, etc.) onto the heat if k is even
transfer coefficients (HTCs) which describe convection on the
surface of the machine tool. Thin plate spline: [ (r ) r 2 log( r ) (5)
To reduce the data needed to train these characteristic
diagrams and to make the large FE meshes more manageable, Further variations, especially for large data sets are RBFs
clustering algorithms can be used to group nodes with similar with compact support, e.g. “Wendland functions” [6]. Such
thermal behavior. Here radial basis functions (RBF) will be basis functions lead to a sparse interpolation system.
used for the clustering. Similar to characteristic diagrams, Now let such a radial basis function ϴi be defined in every
RBFs can be used for interpolation in order to approximate sample point xi, i=1…N. The usual ansatz for an interpolation
high-dimensional real-valued functions [6]. function is: N
The paper starts by introducing radial basis functions and
two types of clustering. Then characteristic diagrams will be
f ( x) ¦
E iIi ( x) (6)
i 1
introduced and with it, the decoupling of fluid and thermo-
elastic simulations explained. A sample U-shaped geometry With (1), this ansatz leads to the linear equations
will be used to validate the approach numerically. N
f ( xi ) ¦E I j j ( xi ) yi i=1…N (7)
Nomenclature j 1

N number of sampling points which can be written as a linear system:

xi sample point
)E RBF y
ϴi(x) radial basis function (8)
ξ ansatz function The components of (8) are defined by the system matrix
r distance of x and xi Φ:=[ϕj(xi)] for i,j=1…N, the vector βRBF=[β1,β2…βN]T of the
p polynomial function unknown coefficients and the right hand side y=[y1,y2…yN]T.
πm polynomial degree The system matrix Φ is obviously symmetric. In [8], it is
M number of polynomial function shown that Φ also positive definite for a vast variety of RBFs.
βRBF, βPOLY unknown coefficients The sole disadvantage of the RBF ansatz is that a large
y right hand side number of sample points are needed to get a sufficiently exact
D heat transfer coefficient approximation of a constant or linear function. One possible
O thermal conductivity of the fluid way to cope with this is to add a polynomial part p(x)
L characteristic length N
Nu
Re
Nusselt number, dependent on:
Reynolds number
f ( x) ¦E
i 1
i
RBF
i I  p ( x) (9)

Pr Prandl number
The d-variate polynomial pπm(Rd) of degree at most m is
defined as
2. Interpolation-approach for thermal parameters
M

2.1. Basics of radial basis functions p ( x) ¦Ej 1

POLY
j p j ( x), (10)

The main difficulty in the use of radial basis functions [7]
is in solving an interpolation problem of N arbitrary sample
points x1, x2…xN in Rd with given values y1, y2…yN in R to
find a function f: Rd→R, fulfilling the interpolation condition
with M=dim(πm(Rd)) and basis polynomials pj for j=1…M.
Consequently, this ansatz has (N+M) unknown coefficients,
while the interpolation system (1) consists of only N
equations, therefore an added condition is imposed
N

¦E
f ( xi ) yi for i=1…N. (1) RBF
for all pπm(Rd)
j p( x j ) 0 (11)
j 1
The first step is to find an ansatz for (1). For this, some
basic functions will be introduced. This leads to a linear matrix system of dimension (N+M)
A function ϴi: Rd→R is a radial basis function if a function
ξ: R→R exists, which satisfies ϴi(x)=ξ(||x-xi||) for a fixed
point xi in Rd. Commonly used types of RBF ansatz functions
ª) P º ª E RBF º ª yº
«PT « » « 0 » (12)
ξ(r) with r=||x-xi|| are ¬ 0 »¼ ¬ E POLY ¼ ¬ ¼
A simple and good choice for πm(Rd) are linear
Gaussian: [ (r ) exp(  Er ) 2
for E !0 (2) polynomials, e.g.
Multiquadric: [ (r ) r 2  1 (3)
Polyharmonic spline:
­ r k if k is odd (4)
[ (r ) ® k
¯r log( r )
342 Janine Glänzel et al. / Procedia CIRP 62 (2017) 340 – 345

To study the interactions between the machine tool and its

p1 ( x) x1 environment, fluid-structure-mechanical simulations must be
performed. Such coupled simulations are very performance
p 2 ( x) x 2 (13) intensive, particularly if many variations of load scenarios are
... required.
In preparation for the decoupling of the fluid and thermo-
p d ( x) x d elastic simulation, the relevant parameters (e.g. temperature,
p M ( x) 1 heat transfer coefficients (HTC), heat flux, flow velocity, flow
direction) obtained from ANSYS-CFX simulations have to be
where xRd, M=d+1and xi is i-th component of x. exported. These characteristic values vary for each node of
The solution β=[βRBF,βPOLY]T of Eq. (12) contains the the surface finite element (FE) mesh of the machine tool and
coefficients for the whole interpolation function contain all important information about the environmental
N M influences. The nodes of the surface FE mesh in the output
f ( xi ) ¦ E I ( x)  ¦ E
i 1
i i
i 1
( N i ) pi ( x). (14) file act as sample points for generating the RBF interpolation.
For the interpolation polyharmonic spline RBF ansatz
functions (4) were chosen. Chapter 2 describes how to change
2.2. Cluster variations for thermal parameters a node cloud of a surface FE mesh to a three dimensional
interpolation function. The main advantages of the use of this
RBF approach for the decoupling are:

x remeshing of the FE data for adaptive post processing,

x simplifying massive sets of data for faster data transfer to
the characteristic diagrams and easier training,
x better handling of big data and high number of degrees of
freedom through selective filtering of relevant data

Using RBF interpolation the necessary characteristic

Fig. 1. Clustering with RBF Interpolations
values can be clustered and used as input parameters for
characteristic diagrams. For simple geometries a standard
vertex mesh with adapted distances could be used, see Fig. 1b
and Fig. 1.
The next step in our research enables the clustering of
complex geometries via the development of an optimization
algorithm for optimal clustering. This algorithm will be
automatically searched the best identification through the
selection of the best subset of all RBF functions.
The current clustering method was tested on HTCs on the
surface of a simple 3D U-shaped part (a simplified small cross
section of a machine tool column. Fig 1a shows the 3D
interpolation function of the HTCs on the U-part obtained
from a CFD simulation. The inlet of the air stream is to the
left of the part. A 100W heat source as a volume load is
placed inside in the front leg of the U-shaped part and it is
significantly warmer than the ambient 25 °C. The almost
symmetric distribution of the HTCs in Fig. 1b and 1c show
the independence of the HTCs from the solid’s temperature.
Fig. 1b and Fig. 1c show two variations of clustering. The
equidistant mesh of the left surface is poorly suited for the
HTCs because the large changes near the corners cannot be
mapped with precision. Adapting the mesh with different
segment sizes to a non-equidistant mesh prevents this effect
without increasing the number of nodes (Fig. 1c).
More load scenarios were calculated for different air
temperatures and velocities. Tables 1 and 2 lists the simulated
air flow combinations used to test the decoupling approach.
The associated data clusters serve as input data for the
characteristic diagrams. Decoupling of fluid and thermo-
elastic simulation through characteristic diagrams
 Janine Glänzel et al. / Procedia CIRP 62 (2017) 340 – 345 343

3. Simulation decoupling through characteristic diagrams

3.1. Characteristic diagrams
Characteristic diagrams are continuous maps of a set of
input variables onto a single output variable. They consist of a
grid of support points along with kernel functions which
describe the interpolation in between. Equation (15) shows a
one-dimensional linear kernel Kj(Ti) between two support
points Tj and Tj+1 which depends on a temperature
Ti  Tˆ j
K j (Ti ) . (15)
Tˆ j 1  Tˆ j
Characteristic diagrams are created by first discretizing
each input variable in order to establish the grid, then
choosing a type of kernel function adequate for describing the
local dependency of the input variables on the output variable
and finally calculating the parameters of the kernel functions
for each support point based on training data from simulations
or experiments. The most common form of characteristic
diagram uses multilinear interpolation between support points,
where a scalar factor rj equal to the output value at the support
point acts as a weight multiplied to the pyramid shaped kernel
Kj.
& & &
f (Ti ) ¦r
j
j ˜ K j (Ti ), Ti : (Ti ,1 , , Ti ,n ). (16)
Without going into details on the mentioned coefficients,
the HTCs depend mainly on the type of fluid, its temperature
and in the case of forced convection, the direction and speed
at which it streams against the surface [10]. Therefore for all
points (x,y,z) on the machine tool surface, the aim is to try to
quantify the following correlation:
&
( x, y, z, v , T ) o D ( x, y, z).
air
(18)
HTCs are static and relatively smooth on any given flat
surface, though they may jump at edges between two surfaces
meeting at a steep angle. So long as each surface is regarded
individually, characteristic diagrams are ideally suited to
storing and interpolating HTCs. This way they can be used to
take the HTCs obtained from CFD simulations and supply
them to thermo-elastic simulations when they are needed.
This enables thermo-elastic simulations of realistic
manufacturing environments with changing, transient
environmental conditions.
(~
x , v , Tair ) o D ( ~
x ). (19)
Fig 2: Unfolded U-shaped part

3.3. Characteristic diagram based HTC interpolation

These higher-dimensional kernels can be created by simply
multiplying one-dimensional kernels. A more detailed account To test the feasibility of decoupling the heat transfer
of characteristic diagrams and how they are calculated can be coefficients using characteristic diagrams, it remains to
found in [9]. Here Priber describes a method called demonstrate that characteristic diagrams can be calculated
“Smoothed Grid Regression” (SGR) which adds smoothing from a limited set of CFD simulations and that they can
terms to the data fitting terms described above in order to fit supply accurate predictions for a wide range of environmental
sparse or defective data. This method formed the basis for the conditions.
characteristic diagram research presented here. Using the U-shaped part described in section 2.2, we have
run a number of CFD simulations with varying air
3.2. Decoupling-approach temperature and speed. The effects of different directions of
the air flow can be seen by comparing the different sides of
The precision of thermo-elastic FEM simulations hinges on the part.
the accuracy of the heat transfer parameters. A number of For the training of the characteristic diagram, the following
parameters are needed to describe the processes of heat combinations of parameters were tested using CFD
conduction, convection and radiation. Conduction depends simulations:
mainly on the material of the machine tool, the interfaces
between its components and the internal heat sources. It is Table 1. Simulation settings for characteristic diagram training.
therefore specific to a machine tool and can be fully
Simulation 1 2 3 4 5 6
parametrized prior to thermo-elastic simulations. Radiation on
the other hand is negligible due to the relatively low Tair [°C] 15 15 15 40 40 40
temperatures of machine tools during operation. Therefore our |v|air [m/s] 1 5 10 1 5 10
research focuses on heat convection which describes the heat
exchange between the machine tool and the surrounding fluid, To test the prediction quality of the characteristic diagram,
typically air. Convection depends most heavily on the heat further simulations were performed:
transfer coefficients. The HTCs need to be specified for the
entire machine tool surface at contact with the air and are
given by
O
D ˜ Nu (Re, Pr). (17)
L
344 Janine Glänzel et al. / Procedia CIRP 62 (2017) 340 – 345
Table 2. Simulation settings for characteristic diagram prediction test.
Simulation 7 8 9 10
Tair [°C] 25 25 25 25
|v|air [m/s] 1 4 7 10
Since the U-shaped part represents a section of a machine
tool column, the HTCs do not change in the z-direction. It is
thus possible to unfold the part into one very wide rectangle
(see fig. 2) and regard only its horizontal dimension, denoted
by ~ x . This produces the simplified 3-dimensional
characteristic diagram:
The HTCs of the training simulations and the test
simulations are shown in figures 2 and 3, respectively.
Fig 3: Training data
Fig 4: Test data
Fig 5: Simulated vs. approximated HTCs of training data
Fig 6: Simulated vs. approximated HTCs of test data
Joining all training data simulations in one diagram and all
test simulations in another, and comparing the simulated
HTCs (grey) to the ones predicted by the characteristic
diagram (red) shows a near perfect approximation of the
HTCs, thus proving the feasibility of the approach. The
residual error of the HTC approximation for the test data
ranges from -5.2 to 4.8 W/m²K. For this demonstration a
simple 3-linear characteristic diagram with linear smoothing
was used, as described in [11]. Expanding this method to
include the other input parameters of equation (19) will
require a much larger characteristic diagram but will not
worsen the approximation of the HTCs.
4. Numerical use case
The important input data for the analytical method are the
temperature field, the heat transfer coefficient and the flow
velocity. The CFX simulation includes the flow calculation
for surrounding volume. The simulation of the environment is
necessary for the description of the HTCs along the machine
surface with the air.
First a simplified machine tool column is designed for the
CFX simulation, see Fig. 6 (right). The column is fixed at the
bottom and the air temperature set to 25°C. A motor spindle is
used as heat source in the y-direction. The chosen motor has a
power of 8.8 kW according to the manufacturer. During
operation, assuming a workload of 60 percent, the power
reduces to circa 5 kW. Consequently the dissipation power
implies 500 W with an efficiency of 90 percent. Therefore 80-
100 W of heat are induced into the column. The heat source is
placed on the top of the motor flange. The material of the
machine tool chosen for the CFX simulation is cast iron.
For the given boundary conditions the CFX simulation
calculates a scalar field with more than 70,000 nodes with
HTC values depending on the flow velocity. Fig. 2 shows the
CFX simulation results. In Fig. 2 on the left, the scalar HTC
field of the column between 2 and 4 W/(m²K) is shown. The
air flow and velocity is presented as a vector field. The
highest velocity and turbulences are founded near the column.
It should be noted, that the flow field results of the
temperature delivery over the surface of the column and
initialization of 0.1m/s at the start of the simulation. On the
right side, the temperature field with the flow field in the y-
direction is calculated. The maximum temperature is 70.8 °C.
The next step before calculating the thermo-elastic
deformation is to cluster the vast data with the described RBF
approach. Since the geometrical structure of the column is
very complex, an automatic optimization algorithm for the
cluster mesh will have to be developed.
 Janine Glänzel et al. / Procedia CIRP 62 (2017) 340 – 345
Fig 7: CFX simulation of machine column; (a) streaming field; (b) temperature field of the environment; (c) heat transfer coefficient of the column
5. Conclusion and Outlook
This paper describes an approach for decoupling fluid and
thermo-elastic simulations using characteristic diagrams.
To this end, a method using RBF interpolation was
employed to cluster the environmental parameters (e.g. heat
transfer coefficient) on the FE surface mesh of the fluid
simulation as preparation step for the characteristic diagrams.
CFD simulations on a 3D u-shaped geometry were used to
calculate and test characteristic diagrams as means of
mapping flow parameters onto HTCs. The characteristic
diagrams were able to predict the HTCs almost flawlessly and
thereby demonstrated the feasibility of the decoupling
approach.
Finally, the planned work on the real machine tool column
and some early simulations results were discussed. Future
work will aim at optimal clustering and characteristic diagram
based decoupling of the HTCs on this complex geometry. In
addition, experimental investigations are planned to verify the
theoretical and computational results.
Acknowledgements
This research is being supported by the German Research
Foundation in the context of the Collaborative Research
Centers Transregio 96, subproject B09.
345
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