Meshing Techniques in

Ansys ICEM CFD 5.0

Christian Nienhser
ANSYS Germany
Christian.Nienhueser@ansys.com
2004 ANSYS, Inc.

ANSYS, Inc. Proprietary

Contents

New Graphic User Interface

Geometry import, clean up
Meshing Tools
Surface meshing
Patch based
Patch independent

Volume meshing
Tetrahedral
Hexahedral
Hybrid

Outlook
Final remarks

October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 2

What is ANSYS ICEM CFD?

Direct CAD

3rd Party CAD

CATIA, Pro/E, I-DEAS,

UG, SE, SW

IGES, ACIS, Parasolid

ICEM CFD
Complete CAE
Pre-processing

Faceted Data
STL, Nastran,
Patran, VRML

Create/Edit geometry
Generate mesh
Edit Mesh
Apply Poperties, B.C.s

Export to Analysis
Over 100 supported solver formats.

October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 3

Development Process
ICEM CFD 4.2
ICEM CFD 4.CFX
ICEM CFD 4.3

AI*Environment 1.0
AI*Environment 2.0

Classic GUI AI*Environment / ICEM CFD 5.0

Classic GUI ICEM CFD / AI*Environment 5.1
October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 4

New Graphic User Interface

User interface
completely
redesigned
Integrates Med,
Tetra, Prism,
Hexa and
Visual3
Layout is
Clean
Modern
Intuitive

October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 5

New Graphic User Interface

Tabbed
menus which
follow the
process
Logical
function
groups
Model tree
For display
control
Right-click
to access
related
options and
operations

October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 6

New Graphic User Interface

Selection and database management

Selection manager
Selection filters
Part selection by entity
Blanking of specific entities
Improved subsets for geometry/mesh
Easier methods of limiting data displayed
October

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Slide 7

New Graphic User Interface

Advanced help
browser
Quick-help

October

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Slide 8

Geometry Import

Unigraphics

CATIA
STL

Direct
Direct CAD
CAD
CATIA,
CATIA,Pro/E,
Pro/E,I-DEAS,
I-DEAS,
UG,
SolidWorks
UG, SolidWorks

SolidWorks

October

Generic
GenericCAD
CAD
IGES,
IGES,ACIS,
ACIS,DWG,
DWG,STEP
STEP

Faceted
FacetedData
Data
STL,
STL,NASTRAN,
NASTRAN,
Patran,
Patran,VRML
VRML

ANSYS ICEM CFD

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 9

Geometry Import

Hexa for CATIA V5

October

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Slide 10

Model Diagnosis and Repair

Build topology function

Tolerance is set automatically on import

Curves are extracted from surface model
Enables model diagnosis
Curves form basis for geometry repair

Imported CAD
October

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Slide 11

Geometry tools

Body definitions

Repair

Topology checker
to find problems
in surface data
Surface editing
Surface closing
Surface from curves Curtain surface
Surface
Driven surface
Surface trimming
retrimming/matching
Swept surface
Surface extension
Merged surface
Revolved surface
Unsplit surface
Shrink wrapped
Offset surface
Split by curvature
surface
Midsurface
Modify surface
Standard surfaces
normals
Adjust thickness
Faceted Surface tools Bolt hole detection
Lofted surface
Button detection
Fillet detection
From connectivity
Point inside solid

Point creation
From screen
Explicit
Offset
Centerpoint
Between points
Endpoint
Intersection
Along curve
Projection to
curve/surface

October

Curve creation
From points
Arc/Circle
Surface param
Intersection
Surface projection
Concatenation
Segmentation
Surface Boundary
Faceted curve tools

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 12

STL to B-Spline conversion

Circle fom points

Use geometry repair

Convert multiblock
mesh to b-spline
Reverse engineering
and legacy data
support

October

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Slide 13

Quad surface meshing

patch dependent
CAD geometry

All-quadrilateral mesh

Edge
model

October

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Slide 14

Quad Surface Meshing

Auto-structured meshing
Mapping = 0

October

Mapping = 0.2

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 15

Extensions
Arbitrary boundary
Holes, prescribed
curves and
prescribed points
One/some transition
triangles
Auto-structured
Mesh refinement

October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 16

Surface meshing enhancements

Unstructured quad
meshing algorithm
integrated into Hexa
mesher.
Allows the easy creation
of hybrid
structured/unstructured
meshes.
Ideal mesh for crash and
NVH.

Initial auto blocking from

CAD surfaces.
Automatic merging of
regions to create a better
blocking.
Geometry feature
recognition in meshing.

October

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Slide 17

Tetra meshing (Octree)

Initial mesh of Maximum
size elements fills a
bounding box

October

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Slide 18

Tetra meshing (Octree)

Mesh is subdivided
to meet specified
sizes
Nodes adjusted to
conform to
geometry

October

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Slide 19

Tetra meshing (Octree)

Flood fill process

finds volume
boundaries

October

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Slide 20

Tetra meshing (Octree)

Patch Independence
Mesh walks over gaps, overlaps, holes, details
A perfect CAD model is not required
Greatly reduces the amount of required CAD cleanup

Surfaces near
stamped label

October

Mesh walks over

the detail

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 21

Tetra meshing (Octree)

Improved: bounding box
by geometry blow-up

October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 22

Tetra meshing: Improved AutoVolume Detection

Material points are automatically created
Multiple volumes are supported

October

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Slide 23

Tetra meshing: Part-by-Part

Enables assemblies to be meshed in batch as
component parts
Mesh is non-conformal

October

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Slide 24

Tetra meshing: Improved

Volume Mesh Controls
Point, line, and volume density
Width parameter extends effect

Volume defined by points or by

bounding box around selected Point density
entities

October

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Slide 25

Hybrid meshes
Tet to hex converter

October

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Slide 26

Prism meshing
Prism layers in pure tetra meshes

October

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Slide 27

Prism meshing

Prism layers in
hybrid meshes
Extrusion of
mixed
quad/triangle
meshes.

October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 28

Hybrid meshing
New hexahedral-dominant meshing

October

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Slide 29

Hybrid meshing (outside of Hexa)

Easily in any order/any element type

Volume tetra -> add prisms -> convert interior to
hexas.
Surface tri/quad mesh -> add prisms -> fill with
tets.
Surface quad mesh -> add boundary hexas ->
fill with hexas/tetras/pyramids/prisms

October

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Slide 30

Hexa meshing
Multi-block structured

Geometry

October

Blocking

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Mesh

Slide 31

Auto 2-D blocking approach

Each Rectangular surface gets a mapped

block.
Arbitrary surfaces get free blocks.
Blocks are independent of surface
topology (morphable).
Geometry recognition is used to group
potentially problem surfaces.

Mapped block
Free block

October

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Slide 32

Hex or hex dominant meshes

Multiple automatic pathways to high

quality all hex or hex dominant meshes.
Auto surface blocking followed by auto
volume blocking.
Direct block decomposition method.
Auto surface blocking into surface meshing
into hex dominant volume meshing.
Hexa tools can be used to assist either the
surface blocking or the volume blocking.

October

Better parametric association

Hybrid meshing framework

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 33

Auto blocking from surface blocking

Start from CAD surfaces.

Generate Auto 2-D blocks based on surfaces
Generate Auto 3-D blocks by filling in 2-D
blocks with Hex dominant mesher
Automatically create mesh spacing and mesh
with existing Hexa techniques.
Results in a high-quality all hex mesh.

All Hex

October

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Slide 34

True automatic blocking

Produces great blocking but sensitive to geometric details

October

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Slide 35

Hex meshing: Hex dominant mesher

Start from CAD geomety

Generate all quad surface mesh as
before
Automatically fills surface mesh with
uniform hex dominant mesh
User can then edit the hex dominant
mesh by automatic smoothing and
mesh editing
HEXA_8 : 4849
PENTA_6 : 287
PYRA_5 : 640
TETRA_4 : 313

October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 36

HEXA: System level

Hexa will do the bookkeeping to
keep track of the connectivity
of hybrid meshes.
Structured blocks.
Extruded blocks

All Quad
Quad + 1 Tri
Quad dominant
All Tri

Unstructured blocks:
Filled by Tetra
Filled by Hex-Dominant mesher
Filled by Delaunay mesher.

October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 37

Final remarks

Thank you!
Questions?

October

CADFEM CZ Users Meeting

Slide 38