Overview of the Meshing Process for Hydrodynamics Analysis

This section describes the basic process for using the ANSYS Meshing application to create a mesh as part of a hydrodynamics analysis. Refer to the Aqwa User's Manual for more information about hydrodynamics analysis. There are three basic steps to creating a mesh:

Create Geometry

You can create geometry for the Meshing application in the Ansys Discovery SpaceClaim or Ansys DesignModeler applications, or import a geometry from an external file. The model should consist of surface and line bodies only (no solid bodies). See General Modeling Requirements in the Aqwa User's Manual for full details of what is required for creating geometry for a hydrodynamics analysis.

Select Physics Preference

Before performing meshing, select Hydrodynamics as your Physics Preference.

Note:  Hydrodynamics can be set as the default preference by selecting Tools > Options, clicking the Meshing heading, and changing the Default Physics Preference to Hydrodynamics. For more information, see Meshing: Options.

Once defined, you can define the following mesh controls:

Define Mesh Attributes

The mesh generation process in the Meshing application is fully automatic. The Hydrodynamics preference corresponds to the uniform sizing with quad dominant method. However, you have considerable control over how the mesh elements are distributed. To ensure that you get the best solution possible with your available computing resources, you can dictate the background element size, type of mesh to generate, and where and how the mesh should be refined. In general, setting up your mesh is a two-step process, as outlined below:

  • Assign suitable global mesh sizes within the Hydrodynamics Physics Preference

  • Override the global sizing locally on bodies, faces, edges, or vertices and the regions close to them by scoping local mesh controls

Generate Mesh

When you are ready to compute the mesh, you can do so by using either the Update feature or the Generate Mesh feature. The mesh for all parts/bodies is also generated at one time. For help in understanding the difference between the Update and Generate Mesh features, see Updating the Mesh Cell State.

Once the mesh is generated, you can view it by selecting the Mesh object in the Tree Outline. You can use the Mesh Metric feature to view the worst quality element based on the quality criterion for a selected mesh metric.