How to Improve Your Mesh in Ansys Workbench
Hi everyone, my name is Samuel Lopez. I am an applications engineer at Ozen Engineering. Today, I'm going to discuss how to improve your mesh in Ansys Workbench.
About Ozen Engineering
Ozen Engineering is an elite channel partner of Ansys. We have a team of highly skilled engineers certified to use software for a variety of physics to solve real-world problems. Our expertise covers:
- Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
- Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
- High and low frequency electromagnetic problems
We offer consulting services for any simulation needs you may have. If you're interested in learning more, feel free to reach out to us at info@ozeninc.com or call our main office.
Improving Your Mesh
Let's dive into improving your mesh. I have two models prepared. The first is the original geometry, and the second includes some refinements. We'll start by examining the geometry:
The model is a simple curved pipe with two square flanges. This geometry is ideal for practice as it includes:
- Curvature
- Small features like bolt holes
- Fillets
Generating a Basic Mesh
Initially, I created a basic mesh. Without any adjustments, the mesh generated is not terrible, but it's preferable to use hexahedral elements over tetrahedral elements for efficiency and ease of resolution.
Hexahedral vs. Tetrahedral Mesh
To achieve a hexahedral mesh, I used a hex dominant method and added body sizing for small areas. This resulted in a mesh with approximately 29,000 nodes, compared to the 7,000 nodes in the tetrahedral mesh. While the hexahedral mesh is more efficient, it is not always desirable due to the increased node count.
Element Quality
Element quality is crucial. Ideally, it should be close to one. A low quality, such as 0.03, can lead to analysis issues. By using a section plane, we can identify problematic areas with jagged elements and poor orthogonality.
Advanced Meshing Techniques
To improve the mesh, I made several cuts in the geometry to simplify it into basic shapes, facilitating the use of a powerful meshing method called sweep mesh or swept mesh.
Swept Mesh Implementation
There are two ways to implement swept mesh:
- Standard Sweep: Select a source surface and mesh through the solid geometry to the target surface, creating hexahedral elements.
- Axisymmetric Sweep: Select a source surface and rotate it around the central axis, creating wedge-shaped elements.
Geometry Simplification
By simplifying the geometry into a curved cylinder and cutting the square bodies in half, we can use the swept mesh method effectively. Additionally, removing small features like fillets can aid in creating a clean mesh.
Final Mesh Quality
The final mesh has approximately 6,000 nodes, fewer than the tetrahedral mesh, and exhibits excellent element quality. This was achieved by:
- Meshing basic cylinders within flange bodies
- Using manual source selection for axisymmetric meshing
- Applying a sweep number of divisions for controlled element distribution
Conclusion
By taking the time to simplify the geometry and apply advanced meshing techniques, we achieved a high-quality hexahedral mesh. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please leave a comment or contact us at info@ozeninc.com.
Thank you for watching, and have a great day!
Hi guys, my name is Samuel Lopez. I am an applications engineer at Ozen Engineering and today I'm going to talk to you about how to improve your mesh in ANSYS Workbench. Before we get started, here's a little bit about us. Ozen Engineering is an elite channel partner of ANSYS.
We have a team of skilled engineers who are certified to use software for various physics to solve real-world problems. We cover everything from FEA to CFD and even some high and low frequency electromagnetic problems.
We offer our expertise on a variety of consulting services and are available to discuss any simulation need you may have. If you're interested, please feel free to reach out to us at info@ozernink.com or give us a call at our main office. Now, let's get into how to actually improve your mesh.
I have two models that I've prepared for this talk. The first one is my original model, which contains the original geometry I used. This will show you what the basic mesh looks like on the model.
I have a few models with just a couple of refinements added, and then we'll go into the improved mesh I've created. Let's look at the geometry. Here we have a simple curved pipe with two square flanges on either end.
This is a good geometry to practice on because it has a little bit of everything: curvature, small features like bolt holes and fillets. In Workbench, I've created a very basic mesh for this. If we don't do anything and just generate the mesh on this part, this is what we'll get.
It's not terrible, but in general, we want to use hexahedral elements instead of tetrahedral elements because they're more efficient and easier to resolve. To create a hexahedral mesh, we can insert a methodology like I've done here.
I've chosen to use a hex-dominant method, which forces the mesh to be hexahedral if possible. I've also added a body sizing to ensure elements fit in small areas like between the bolt holes and the sidewall.
Unsuppressing these and remeshing will give us a hexahedral mesh, but the element quality might not be as high as we'd like. We've also increased the number of nodes from 7,000 to 29,000, which isn't always desirable. Checking the element quality, we want it to be as close to one as possible.
This 0.03 is concerning and could potentially lead to problems in our analysis. To fix this, we can use meshing methods like swept mesh, which creates hexahedral elements that follow the geometry's shape.
In the second part of the video, I've made changes to facilitate meshing and create a better mesh. I've created a new mesh and several cuts to simplify the geometry into simpler shapes.
This allows us to take advantage of swept mesh, which creates nice hexahedral elements that follow the geometry's shape. By cutting the geometry into simpler shapes, we can create a high-quality hexahedral mesh with good orthogonality and fewer nodes.
This results in a cleaner, more efficient mesh that's easier to work with. In summary, to improve your mesh in ANSYS Workbench, focus on using hexahedral elements, checking element quality, and simplifying your geometry.
By doing so, you'll create a more efficient and accurate mesh for your analyses.
