Week- 5 - Solid meshing
AIM: To mesh the rear view mirror with using tetra elements within the given quality parameters.
PROCEDURE FOLLOWED:
- Geometry Cleanup after applying TOPO.
- Meshing the outer surface with ortho tria elements in mesh module.
- Defining a volume with a new property with PSOLID card.
- Performing Unstructured mesh operation.
The given CAD model is studied first for clear understanding of its surfaces.
GEOMETRY CLEANUP:
TOPO operation is executed for joining of all surfaces. Then the Checks Geometry operation is carried out for finding the errors in the model. The errors displayed are fixed using the auto fix command.
CAD model with Geometrical errors
OUTER SURFACE MESHING
Only after eliminating all the geometrical errors meshing is carried out separately for each part. Each property is turned on separately for meshing all the parts separately.
Property-4 turned on for meshing
The outer surface of the model is carried out using ortho tria and tria elements. Ortho tria elements are mostly used on the curved surface as they have good feature capturing capabilities. regular tria elements are used on the plane surfaces.
Surface meshing with Ortho tria and regular tria elements
TETRA MESHING
After the surface finishing is done volume meshing is carried out. There are two methods for obtaining tetra elements in unstructured mesh. They are TETRA RAPID and TETRA FEM. TETRA RAPID algorithm meshes the Volume with Tetra Elements whereas TETRA FEM algorithm automatically creates a Tetrahedral mesh inside Volume, initially with pyramid elements if the starting surface mesh contains quad elements.
As our surface comprises of only tria elements TETRA RAPID command is used. this command creates tetra elements inside the volume.
FE model with Tetra elements inside the volume
Once the tetra meshing is carried out the FE model is checked for collapsed elements. These elements if generated can be eliminated using the move free option which can alter the shape of the elements manually.
The same process is applied for all the other volumes.
Different parts meshed separately
CONCLUSION
The given CAD model (rear view mirror) is successfully meshed with tetra elements along with satisfying quality parameters.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Tetra Meshing