Physics Preference

The Physics Preference option allows you to establish how Workbench will perform meshing based on the physics of the analysis type that you specify. The available options are Mechanical, Electromagnetics, CFD, Explicit, Nonlinear Mechanical and Hydrodynamics. The value of the Physics Preference option sets the default for various meshing controls, as detailed in the following table.

Note:

The solver options for the Mechanical physics preference appear within the Mechanical application only, and only under certain circumstances. See Solver Preference for more information.
When Physics Preference is Hydrodynamics, the only properties you can set are Element Size and Defeature Size. The meshing controls that appear in the table below are not applicable to the Hydrodynamics physics preference. Therefore, Hydrodynamics is not included in the table. Refer to Overview of the Meshing Process for Hydrodynamics Analysis for related information.
When the Physics Preference is Explicit, the quality based meshing considers Aspect Ratio (Explicit) for Patch Conforming Tetrahedron Method. Also, in the Mesh Details view under Advanced options, the Triangle Surface Mesher is set to Advancing Front by default. This provides more uniform triangle meshing. If the Multizone Mesh Method is selected, the Split Angle in Advanced option is enabled to give automatically more orthogonal meshing for many cases.
Refer to the Meshing Overview section for further details about physics based meshing.

Meshing Control	Physics Preference
	Mechanical		Nonlinear Mechanical	Electromagnetics	CFD			Explicit
	Mechanical APDL Solver	Rigid Body Dynamics Solver	Nonlinear Mechanical	Electromagnetics	CFX-Solver	Fluent Solver	Polyflow Solver	Explicit
Element Order	Program Controlled	Linear (Read-only)	Program Controlled	Quadratic	Linear	Linear	Linear	Linear
Straight Sided Elements	No	N/A	No	Yes	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Element Size	Default	Default	Default	Default	Default	Default	Default	Default
Sizing Options	Capture Curvature set to Yes for shell models; otherwise Use Adaptive Sizing set to Yes	Capture Curvature set to Yes for shell models; otherwise Use Adaptive Sizing set to Yes	Capture Curvature set to Yes	Use Adaptive Sizing set to Yes	Capture Curvature set to Yes	Capture Curvature set to Yes	Capture Curvature set to Yes	Capture Curvature set to Yes for solid bodies and No for sheet bodies
Transition / Growth Rate	Fast / 1.85	Fast / 1.85	N/A / 1.5	Fast / 1.85	N/A / 1.2	N/A / 1.2	N/A / 1.2	N/A / 1.5
Span Angle Center / Curvature Normal Angle	Coarse / 70.395°	Coarse / 70.395°	N/A / 60°	Coarse / 70.395°	N/A / 18°	N/A / 18°	N/A / 18°	N/A / 72°
Error Limits	Standard Mechanical	Standard Mechanical	Nonlinear Mechanical	Electromagnetics	CFD	CFD	CFD	Explicit
Smoothing	Medium	Medium	N/A	Medium	Medium	Medium	Medium	High
Inflation Algorithm	Pre	Pre	Pre	Pre	Pre	Pre	Pre	Pre
Collision Avoidance	Stair Stepping	Stair Stepping	Stair Stepping	Stair Stepping	Stair Stepping	Layer Compression	Stair Stepping	Stair Stepping
Transition Ratio	0.272	0.272	0.272	0.272	0.77	0.272	0.272	0.272
Rigid Body Behavior	Dimensionally Reduced	Dimensionally Reduced	Dimensionally Reduced	Dimensionally Reduced	Dimensionally Reduced	Dimensionally Reduced	Dimensionally Reduced	Full Mesh
Mesh Quality Workflow Targets	Element Quality	Element Quality	Skewness, Jacobian Ratio (Corner Nodes)	Element Quality	Skewness	Skewness	Skewness	Element Quality, Aspect Ratio (Explicit), Characteristic Length (LS-Dyna)