Skin Depth-Based Mesh Refinement

When you request skin depth-based mesh refinement, you instruct Maxwell to refine the surface triangle length of all tetrahedral elements on a face to within a specified value. A layered mesh is created based on the surface mesh. The layers are graded based on the skin depth and number of layers you specify.

During skin depth-based mesh refinement, Maxwell creates a series of layers that are planes parallel to the object face, and that are spaced within the specified skin depth. For each point on the surface of the face, a series of points (P0, P1, P2, ..., Pn) are added to the mesh, where n is the number of layers. P0 is the point on the surface and the distance from P0 to Pn is the skin depth. The points are spaced in a non-uniform manner, with the distance between them decreasing in a geometric progression, as you move from Pn to P0.

For example, if


Skin Depth:

12 mm

Number of Layers of Elements:

4


then


Distance [P0,P1]:

0.8 mm.

Distance [P1,P2]:

1.6 mm.

Distance [P2,P3]:

3.2 mm.

Distance [P3,P4]:

6.4 mm.

Distance [P0,P4]:

0.8 + 1.6 + 3.2 + 6.4 = 12 mm


The skin depth-based refinement first satisfies the surface triangle edge length criterion, then introduces the series of points to each additional layer. If a limit has been placed on mesh growth, one of the following happens:

Because refining by skin depth can add many seeding points, you should first refine the surface of the object using length-based mesh refinement to obtain an accurate count of the number of points Maxwell will add when refining by skin depth. This allows you to reach the surface edge length criterion and approximate the number of elements in the mesh and the number of points on the surfaces before proceeding to skin depth seeding.

The refinement criteria you specified are used to refine the current mesh.

Related Topics 

Assigning Skin Depth-Based Mesh Refinement on Object Faces