Tech Briefs

Automatic Hex Dominant Meshing

Free-form hex dominant meshing has been available in ADINA for several years (since version 8.2). However, it is restricted to parts with somewhat limited complexity and the mesh subdivision on a part must be uniform.

In ADINA 8.7, the free-form hex dominant mesher is significantly improved to handle more complex parts and allow non-uniform mesh subdivision. In addition, various features that are available in the free-form tet mesher can now be used for the hex dominant mesher, e.g., curvature-based refinement, automatic grading. The mesher will also automatically refine areas where it has difficulty meshing.

Ideally, one would like to generate a mesh with all hexahedral elements. However, that is not possible for a general geometry. Hence, hex dominant meshing is used in practice to obtain meshes with a mix of hexahedra, pyramids and tetrahedra. As the name implies, the mesher tries to generate as many hexahedra as possible.

Complex models remain challenging to mesh with mostly hexahedra so it is important to remember to simplify as much as possible the parts prior to applying the hex dominant meshing.

Below, we show some meshes obtained with the free-form hex dominant mesher in ADINA 8.7. Click on an image to see the detail.


 








We recognize that meshing is a very important part of performing a finite element analysis and it is our goal to continuously improve the meshing capabilities of the ADINA System.


Keywords:
Free-form mesh, hexahedral element, brick element, mesh refinement, automatic mesh grading