The adaption process is separated into two distinct tasks.
The individual cells are marked for refinement or coarsening based on the adaption function, which is created from geometric and/or solution data.
The cell is refined or considered for coarsening based on these adaption marks.
The primary advantages of this modularized approach are the abilities to create sophisticated adaption functions and to experiment with various adaption functions without modifying the existing mesh.
Important: Write a case and data file before starting the adaption process. If you generate an undesirable mesh, you can restart the process with the saved files.
Two methods of adaption are available in Ansys Fluent:
hanging node adaption
This method refines various cell types based on predefined templates (see Hanging Node Adaption). It does not refine polyhedral cells, and requires additional memory to maintain the hierarchy of mesh refinement levels.
polyhedral unstructured mesh adaption (PUMA)
This method treats all cell types as polyhedra, and applies a single refinement methodology (see Polyhedral Unstructured Mesh Adaption). It does not create hanging nodes and requires less memory than hanging node adaption. It is only available for 3D meshes (for which it is the default), and is available in a version that is suitable for 2.5D meshes (that is, meshes that are one cell thick).