Modeling the plastic components of the side door of a car using 2d shell elements in Hypermesh

Objective:

1. To model the given geometry of a Side door using 2-d shell elements as per the required quality criteria in Hypermesh.
2. To assign correct thickness to different parts of the geometry.

Quality Criteria:

S.N	Quality Criteria	Value
1	Target length	4 mm
2	Aspect Ratio	5
3	Skewness	45
4	Warping	15
5	Taper	0.5
6	Min. Length	2mm
7	Max. Length	6mm
8	Min angle Quad	45
9	Max angle Quad	135
10	Min angle Tria	20
11	Max angle Tria	120
12	Tria %	10

Procedure:

1. Open the given geometry of the plastic Side door of a car in Hypermesh. The geometry is incomplete with missing surfaces and is distorted in some regions.
2. Clean up the topology of the parent CAD by using the options under the geometry menu and tools menu. Note: Study the CAD and observe the various regions of the geometry during the topology clean-up stage itself. The geometry is a plastic component and hence it has a variable thickness. Try to find which all regions are varying in thickness. This will come in handy for understanding the model better.
3. After cleaning the topo of the parent CAD, generate the mid-surface by using the options under the auto mid-surface generating tool. Note: mid-surface(offset+planes+sweeps) seemed to work the best for me.
4. Check the mid-surface that is generated by Hypermesh. Clean the mid-surface by using the various clean-up tools available in Hypermesh. The Hypermesh algorithm might have missed out on capturing some ribs and other features. The next step is to find these missed out regions and manually generate the mid-surface for them.
5. Now that we have generated the complete mid-surface, we have to assign correct thicknesses to each of these mid-surfaces. For assigning thickness, we will first create new properties and define the required thicknesses in the property cards and then assign the parts of the mid-surface to its respective property.
6. The next step is to mesh the generated mid-surface. To enter the required quality criteria, press F10 on your Keyboard, and assign the required quality parameters by clicking on settings. Now, we can start meshing modeling our component using 2d elements. Meshing is done using the auto mesh panel setting the target element length as 4 mm. During meshing, make sure that there are no connectivity issues with the generated mesh elements.
7. Check the mesh for Quality and clear them as far as possible. Make sure that all the features are captured properly.
8. The Modeled geometry can be visualized with thickness by turning on the 2d detailed element representation. Check the model with the Parent CAD to see if all the features are captured properly.

Result:

1. Modeled the geometry of a plastic side door using 2d elements in Hypermesh.
2. Assigned correct thicknesses and captured all the features properly.

Learning outcome:

1. Modeling plastic components with varying thicknesses.

Find the completed file in the link given below:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oUqqrJrQKKq50B2cCc_ewSRugoQbYzPM?usp=sharing