Modeling Solder "thin volumes" in ANSYS???

[Damienb]

I have creatd an assembly and would like to model the solder between components for thermal and structural detail. The issue I have is that the solder is 0.002" thick and creates over 10,000 elements. Is there a better way to represent the solder in the assembly? There are 4 layers of solder in the model. The model is 3-D. I am using ANSYS 9.0 and Inventor to create the SAT files. Please help!

 

[Drej]

> Is there a better way to represent the solder in the assembly?

Yes. Don't. Forget the solder in the model, you'll never be able to fully justify the results anyway. Do a hand calc on the solder instead.