Meshing: The Critical Bridge

The drive for excellence in this sometimes-hidden step between modeling and analysis.

This engine-compartment closeup of an AGCO tractor shows that all of the detail of the original CADmodel is retained for a PowerFLOW simulation of airflow management and cooling. It was not necessary to defeature for the simulation and the volume mesh was automatically generated. Image courtesy of Exa and AGCO.

If you remember anything from Finite Elements 101, it's that successful design analysis includes creating a meaningful mesh. At a detailed level, analysts love to discuss the merits of shells versus solids and tet versus hex types. At the broader level, there are diverging approaches to the fundamental physics, and the needs of structural analysts differ from those analyzing fluid flow (meshing a surface/solid or the volume around it).

Defining the Problem
At COMSOL, Bernt Nilsson, senior VP of marketing, summarizes activity in the preprocessing arena. "The main challenge for the meshing community over the past years has been to develop tools that prepare the CAD model for efficient meshing. This includes both de-featuring operations that modify the underlying CAD model, often referred to as real operations, and tools for modifying an overlay topology on the original model, referred to as virtual operations.

"Both types of operations," says Nilsson, "aim to remove small details such as fillets, short edges, and small or narrow faces that will either cause trouble in the mesh generation process or force an extreme mesh resolution near the small feature. By providing automatic or semi-automatic identification of small details, the preprocessor can save a large amount of time during preparation of the CAD geometry for analysis. The preprocessing efforts pay off by paving the way to get the most out of the finite element solvers in terms of speed and accuracy."

Independent Expertise
In the realm of stand-alone meshers, three companies market products with years of development and improvements behind them: XYZ Scientific, Pointwise, and Siemens PLM Software. Each has strong opinions and technical differences, targets one or more different solvers, and develops extremely powerful products.

The drive for excellence in this sometimes-hidden step between modeling and analysis.

This engine-compartment closeup of an AGCO tractor shows that all of the detail of the original CADmodel is retained for a PowerFLOW simulation of airflow management and cooling. It was not necessary to defeature for the simulation and the volume mesh was automatically generated. Image courtesy of Exa and AGCO.

If you remember anything from Finite Elements 101, it's that successful design analysis includes creating a meaningful mesh. At a detailed level, analysts love to discuss the merits of shells versus solids and tet versus hex types. At the broader level, there are diverging approaches to the fundamental physics, and the needs of structural analysts differ from those analyzing fluid flow (meshing a surface/solid or the volume around it).

Defining the Problem
At COMSOL, Bernt Nilsson, senior VP of marketing, summarizes activity in the preprocessing arena. "The main challenge for the meshing community over the past years has been to develop tools that prepare the CAD model for efficient meshing. This includes both de-featuring operations that modify the underlying CAD model, often referred to as real operations, and tools for modifying an overlay topology on the original model,...