Project 1 - 2D meshing on the instrumental Panel

Aim:

To extract the mid-surface of the given instrument panel and mesh the component aligned with the given quality criteria and assign appropriate thickness to the parts.

Procedure:

1. Import the model into ANSA workspace and check the model for different components it has.

the given model one component.

2. Geometry check and mid surface extraction.

Check the model for any free edges and auto fix the defects and if still not cleared manually rebuild the defected surface.

The geometry check is carried on the model by going to TOOLS > CHECKS > Geometry

right click on errors >  Fix

Mid-surface Extraction:

after clearing all the defects in the model, extract the mid-surface, use auto mid-surface for the base and manual mid-surfacing for the ribs and variable thickness areas.

Model preperation for Meshing :

To prepare the parts for meshing the topology must be cleaned based on the average minimum element size, any feature below the minimum element size needs to be ignored if the feature is not important to capture.

Capturing of fillets in the areas where minimum element length does not satisfy, use Dach option to quickly get the mid-line for the fillets.

Topo > Faces > Dach

3. Element Quality criteria Setup:

To set up the quality criteria for the meshing go to UTILITIES > QUALITY CRITERIA

Meshing :

switch to Mesh module bar in the modules menu bar,most used options in meshing process are highlighted below.

Using these common parameters repeatedly a 2D mesh passing all the quality can be generated

The meshed model has 3.45% of tria elements which is below 15% which satisfies the quality criteria, some elements near triple cons fail for quality which account to 0.62% of total elements.

Thickness assignment to parts:

Create property cards with different thickness and assign the property cards according to the base model thickness reference.

Drawing shell as solid and checking the applied thickness to the master model.

Learning outcomes:

Manual mid-surfacing of the plastic parts, methods to extract mid-surface of dog house structures, rearranging construction lines to satisfy the  quality criteria, assigning the thickness to parts.

Conclusion:

Manual mid-surfacing of the given instrument panel model is carried out, rearranging the feature lines for meshing operation is done and the model is meshed to satisfy the quality criteria, elements failure at 2 triple cons connecting can not be avoided in the complicated plastic models.