Recently, variational integrators as a group of geometrical integration methods have absorbed the attention of researchers because of their particular properties. The main idea in this method is discretizing the variational form of the problem instead of its differential form. Consequently, the method benefits from a symplectic structure that preserves the momentum and also the calculated energy remains in a bounded domain. Although in recent years, the application of this method has been proposed in many practical fields, its implementation in thermo-elastic problems has received less attention. So the main goal of the present study is to investigate the efficiency and performance of variational integrators when they are applied to thermo-elastic problems. For this purpose, at first, introducing a thermal displacement variable indicative of thermodynamic behavior of the system together with other relevant thermo-elastic parameters, a variational formulation was derived using Hamilton-Pontryagin principle. Then based on the derived formulation, appropriate relations for variational integrators as applied to thermo-elastic systems were also extracted. In the next step, two specific problems, investgited in other researches, were simulated using the derived relations in the previous steps. Simulation results show a good agreement with results presented in other relevant papers. An algorithm for asynchronous variational integrators was also derived to simulate thermo-elastic systems. To investigate the the applicability of this algorithm, an elastic system including a rod whose left end was fixed and the other end was free, was simulated. Temperature at the fixed end was assumed to be constant while at the other end was changing with time. The same system was also analyzed using finite element method and results of the two procedures were compared and an acceptable agreement was verified. Keywords:Variational Integrators, Thermoelastic, Hamilton-Pontryagin.
