Workshop 02 Volume Fill Methods

Introduction to ANSYS FLUENT Meshing

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Introduction
Workshop Description:
Mesh files will be read into the Fluent Meshing software ready for volume mesh generation. Various options for volume fill will be explored including creation of tet, hexcore, and prism layers This workshop aims to teach basic skills in the use of the Fluent Meshing interface for filling boundary meshes with volume mesh elements

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Learning Aims:

Launching Fluent in Mesher Mode Reading Mesh file(s) Generating tet meshes Generating tet meshes with prisms Generating hexcore meshes Using advanced prism options Improving the quality of the volume mesh Setting Boundary Condition types Switching from Serial Meshing Mode to Parallel Solution Mode
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Starting ANSYS Fluent in Meshing Mode

Open the Fluent Launcher by clicking the Windows Start menu, then selecting
Fluent. 14.5 in the Fluid Dynamics sub-menu of the ANSYS 14.5 program group. Enable Meshing Mode under Options. Choose Double Precision Choose Parallel Processing Option and 2 processors Set Working Directory to the area where files are Click OK to start Fluent in meshing mode.

Note that parallel processing and double precision currently only affects Solver Mode. Meshing is done in serial and parallel processes are utilized only when we switch to solution mode.
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Read and Display Boundary Mesh

Read in the Mesh file using
File Read Boundary Mesh Choose the file sedan.msh.gz

Display the Grid

Open Display Grid Select Boundary filter Hit Display The mesh is shown in the graphics window The Surface mesh is of a simple car with small wind tunnel surrounding it Click into the graphics window and use Ctrl-z to switch to zone filter. Right click twice on some boundaries to deselect them from the Face Zones list interactively and hit Display again to see the car inside the wind tunnel
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Add Prefix to Wind-Tunnel Zones

To make list navigation easier, it is
good practice to employ prefixes in Fluent Meshing

In Boundary Manage panel select

the zones:

ground, inlet, outlet, outlet-side, outlettop, symmetry

Choose Rename option and tick

Change Prefix

Change From to a blank as shown and

To to wt-

Hit Apply and note that the zones

selected now have the prefix wt- and now sit at the bottom of the list

Forms are listed alphabetically and so

prefixes like this help to organise lists
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Check for Free and Multi Faces

Open Boundary Merge Nodes
panel and click Count Free Nodes

There should be none If there were some free nodes we

could try to merge nodes in this panel to fix Close the panel

Open Display Grid and deselect

All but select Free and Multi and then Display to see if there are any issues visually

There should be no free or multi faces

in this mesh file If there were free or multi faces where there should not be, the steps shown in Workshop 1 should be followed in order to fix them
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Check the Quality of the Surface Mesh

Open Report Face Limits Select all Face Zones in the list
and hit compute

The default quality measure is

tri skewness for the surface mesh and here we see the mesh is good quality, having max skew < 0.6

Close the panel

When generating prism layers we recommend to lower max skewness on boundaries to < 0.7 or better < 0.6

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Create a Boundary Group for Prisms

From the Mesh Generation pane
click button Create Groups ground boundaries in the list:

Select all the car boundaries and the

car, mirror, wheel-arch-front, wheelarch-rear, wheel-front, wheel-rear and wt-ground

Hit Create and give the Group Name

_prisms

Close the User Defined Groups

panel
Use of underscore _ at the start of the group name allows that group to be listed at the top of the Face Zone Groups List

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Verify Correct Normal Orientation (1)

Prisms will grow from a boundary in the
direction the boundary normals are pointing

We have a few ways to visualize this in Fluent

Meshing

Open Display -> Grid, in the Faces tab select

only All in the Options and the group _prisms in the Face Zone Groups selection

Click into the Attributes tab and enable Edges,

Filled and Lights

Enable Normals and choose the Normal Scale

of 0.005

Hit Display and examine the mesh

Normals should point inside the flow region

except for the wheel-arch boundaries which are mis-aligned

Look at the wheel arches to examine normals

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Verify Correct Normal Orientation (2)

Another (Beta) option for viewing normals is to
use color-by-normal, activated using a hidden command

Type this command into the console and press

<Enter>
(enable-color-by-normal #t)

De-select Normals under options and click

Colors. Choose the new Color-by-Normal option and Close the Grid Colors panel

Hit Display The Color-by-Normal option will color the

direction normals are pointing in grey while the other side of the boundary will be yellow

This method can make normal direction

easier to understand for complex cases
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Normal Orientation Visualization

Display Normal Option with 0.005 Scale Factor

Color by Normal Options

We see here that the wheel arch boundary has the normals pointing in the wrong direction i.e. Into the solid of the car We will need to reorient these normals which could be done by flipping them in Boundary Manage but here we will use a more automatic command in the Prisms Panel
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Prism Growth Settings

Open the Auto Mesh panel by clicking the
button in the Volume Mesh area

We have not been using an Object based

workflow here so retain none for Object

Automesh will act on the currently active

domain (global)

Click Boundary Layer Mesh -> Set...

Select the _prisms Boundary Zone Group

filter to select the zones we wish to grow prisms on (all car zones + ground zone) Choose the following settings: Offset Method: Aspect Ratio Growth Method: Geometric First Aspect Ratio: 5 Rate: 1.2 Click Apply under Zone Specific Growth
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Prism Growth Options

Click Growth Options... Ensure Allow Shrinkage is selected Enter 200 for the Max Aspect Ratio and click
Apply

Close the panel

The Allow Shrinkage option enables prism proximity algorithms in Fluent Meshing which will prevent prism cells colliding with each other in areas of proximity and sharp corners

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Orient Normal Direction

In the Directon tab click on Orient
Normals ...

Display the boundaries in the list

using Draw to view the wheel arch boundaries with incorrect normal direction (yellow)

Enter a location within the flow

region (e.g. 0, 1, 1 for X, Y and Z respectively)

Click Apply to orient the normals

correctly and Close panel

Click Draw again to see the updated

coloring showing normals are now pointing into the flow (grey)

Switch back to Color-by-ID in Display

Grid Attributes Colors
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Oriented
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Set Automesh and Save Settings

Close the Prism panel In the Auto Mesh Panel tick the Prisms
tickbox which is now un-greyed as we have set the parameters up

There are no quad zones in this problem so

Quad Tet Transition can be left as default

Choose No Fill for the Volume Fill option Prior to prism generation click Apply and
save the mesh file

FileWrite Mesh sedan-prisms-set.msh.gz

In Fluent Meshing the surface mesh is the only geometry we have. Once prism quads have been imprinted we cannot simply delete prisms to get back to the original mesh it is an irreversible process. For this reason it is good practice to Apply settings and save a mesh with that set-up before proceeding to create the mesh.
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Create Prisms

Hit Mesh to create prisms Prisms are created with an advancing

layer algorithm and quality assessed and improved at each layer until the final layer is generated

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Examine Prisms
Open Display Grid panel Click into the Bounds tab and
enable Limit by Z with min = max = 0.38

In the Cells tab select the prism

cells (prism-cells-#) and tick All, then Display

The graphics window

shows the prisms on the

Shrunk prism layers

cut-plane Z=0.38

Zoom to view the area around

where wheel and ground meet and note the shrinkage around areas of proximity
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Prism Quality
Open Report Cell Limits Select the prism cells in the Cell Zones list
and Compute the quality limits

Note the maximum skewness reported is

less than 0.9 skewness

Close the Report Cell Limits panel Write the current Mesh. File Write
Mesh sedan_with_prisms.msh.gz
Note that if the mesh was of poor quality (Skew > 0.9) Mesh Tools Prism Improve could be used to smooth the cells and improve quality further as a post-mesh operation.
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Investigate Domains
The No Fill option for Volume Fill within Auto Mesh will allow the user to
grow prism and/or pyramids if required and then automatically create a closed domain for the user to fill later with their choice of volume mesh

Open Mesh Domains Select tetrahedral Domain and click Activate. Draw to view the boundaries in
the active domain. Close the Domains panel.

All Fluent Meshing panels will now only see boundaries which form the
closed shell on top of the prism layers previously generated

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Set Tet Parameters

Auto Mesh will apply only to the current
active domain

Switch Prisms off as we dont want prisms in

the tet domain

Select Tet for Volume Fill and click Set... Retain default options in the Tet
Initialization tab

In Tet Refinement tab hit Compute to

calculation max tet volume based upon max triangle edge length in the domain

Choose a Geometric Cell Size Function

Growth Rate of 1.35

Click Apply and Close In Auto Mesh click Mesh to create the tets
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Display Grid
Ensuring the bounds are still set to
Zmin=Zmax=0.38, display the Mesh in the active domain using Display Grid and choosing fluid-# tet cells in the Cell Zones tab and hitting Display

Return to Mesh Domains panel

and activate the Global Domain

Note that in Display Grid Cell

Zones we now see both the tet and prism fluid zones in the list

Select both zones and click Display to

see both tet and prism cell zones with bounds set to the same cutplane

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Check Cell Quality

Activate the Global domain using Mesh Domain
Global Activate
Update

Check Mesh Size using Report Mesh Size Check the maximum skewness using Report Cell
Limits

The tet part of the mesh has skew > 0.9 Use Mesh Tools Auto Node Move

Set Quality Limit to 0.9 (default) Select All Zones for Cell Zones (default) Select all Boundary Zones in the list Retain Restrict Boundary Nodes Along Surface and Dihedral Angle of 120 Increase Iterations to 5 Hit Apply
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Save the improved mesh with File Write Mesh sedan_tet_prism_vol.msh.gz

Hexcore Mesh with Prism Ignore

We will now produce another mesh with the same prism settings
but we will now

Allow prisms to be ignored in regions where they are shrinking too much Allow non-conformal hex-tet transition where prisms are ignored Fill with Hexcore volume mesh rather than tet Merge the cell zones into one We will do all this in one step using Auto Mesh and avoiding manual usage of Domains

Read in the boundary mesh with prism settings saved

FileRead Mesh sedan-prisms-set.msh.gz Open Auto Mesh and apply settings in following slide then hit Mesh

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Auto Mesh Settings for Hexcore-Prism

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Allow Ignore stops shrinking and ignores prisms completely if shrinkage more than shrink factor is required for good quality 3 Buffer Layers slows hex growth in hexcore 0 Peel Layers maximises number of hexes in the domain and lessens cell count due to tet number reduction

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Display Grid
Ensuring the bounds are set to
Zmin=Zmax=0.38 in DisplayMeshBounds, display the Mesh in the active domain using Display Grid and choosing fluid-# in the Cell Zones tab and hitting Display

Zoom to the wheel and note:

There is only one cell zone and it
contains all cells (prism, tet, hex) as we used Merge Cell Zones The prisms stop once shrinkage hits the Max Shrink Factor of 0.5 and nonconformals used to transition to tet elements

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 In Display Grid switch cell display

off by deselecting All and Cell Zones

Display Prism Sides

In Bounds tab deselect Limit by Z In Faces tab choose the _prisms Face
Zone Group and also manually select the boundary prism-side-# and Display. Observe prism side.

Remove prism-side-# from the list

and add prism-side-#-intf:# and Display. Observe prism side interface.

Prism-side-#

Prism-side-#-intf:#

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Check Cell Quality

Check Mesh Size using Report Mesh Size
Update

Check the maximum skewness using Report Cell

Limits

The mesh has skew > 0.9 Use Mesh Tools Auto Node Move

Set Quality Limit to 0.85 Select All Zones for Cell Zones (default) Select all Boundary Zones in the list Retain Restrict Boundary Nodes Along Surface and Dihedral Angle of 120 Increase Iterations to 5 Hit Apply

Save the improved mesh with File Write Mesh sedan_hexcore_prism_vol.msh.gz

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Check Boundary Condition Types

Open Boundary Manage Highlight all Face Zones in the list Click List and observe the output in the
console window

Note that each boundary is described in

detail and the boundary condition type can be verified and changed if necessary before moving to solution mode

Note that the interfaces created in the

prism ignore regions automatically have interface type

Save mesh File Write Mesh

sedan_hexcore_prism_vol.msh.gz

Switch to solution mode by clicking the

button and answering Yes to the question
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Create Mesh Interface in Solution Mode

Before proceeding with the standard
solution the prism-side interface must be set up in Mesh Interfaces Create/Edit

Choose a name e.g. Prism-side-interface Select prism-side-# as Interface Zone 1 and

prism-side-#-intf:# as Interface Zone 2 (order not important)

Choose Matching Interface Option as we

have a 1:1 type overlap between interfaces

Hit Create to create the Interface and Close Save Case as

sedan_hexcore_prism_vol.cas.gz

Note that we used Double Precision in this example because robustness of the prism ignore option is much better in the solver for interface creation.

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