Adaptive Mesh Refinement Process Flow

HFSS uses the adaptive mesh refinement technique and generates accurate solutions with minimal use of computational resources. The following diagram shows the adaptive mesh refinement process flow that can deliver accurate results with least user involvement.

For mesh operations, defining seeding is an optional step in the solution process, as shown in the flow diagram. This is because the automatic adaptive refinement process is adequate to produce accurate results. Only on rare occasions, adaptive refinement is used with mesh operations.

The process depicted by the flow diagram can be summarized as follows:

1. HFSS generates an initial mesh that can be controlled by surface approximation settings.
2. Seed refinement (if assigned) and Lambda refinement occur on the initial mesh.
3. Using the resulting mesh, HFSS computes the electromagnetic fields in the structure.
4. From the current solution, HFSS produces error estimates and refines the mesh in regions of high error and uses the refined mesh to generate another solution.
5. HFSS performs the iterative process of solve, error analyses, and adaptive refinement until the convergence criteria are satisfied or the maximum number of adaptive passes is completed.

The following figure illustrates that the initial mesh is refined until convergence criteria are satisfied and a suitable final mesh is generated.