Meshing is one of the most important aspects of a simulation process and yet it can be one of the most frustrating and difficult to get right. Whether you are using CAD based simulation tools or more powerful flagship simulation tools, there are different approaches to take when it comes to meshing complicated assemblies for structural or thermal analysis.
ANSYS has grown into the biggest simulation company globally by acquiring powerful technologies, but more importantly, integrating their capabilities into a single platform. This is true for meshing as well. Many of ANSYS’ acquisitions have come with several strong meshing capabilities and functionalities and ANSYS Workbench integrates all of that into what we call Workbench Meshing. It is a single meshing tool that incorporates a variety of global and local mesh operations to ensure that the user not only gets a mesh, but gets a good quality mesh without needing to spend a lot of time in the prep process. We’ll take a look at a couple examples here.
TRACTOR AXLE
This is a Tractor Axle assembly that has 58 parts including bolts, gaskets and flanges. The primary pieces of the assembly also has several holes and other curved surfaces. Taking this model into Workbench Meshing yielded a good mesh even with default settings. From here by simply adding a few sizing controls and mesh methods we quickly get a mesh that is excellent for structural analysis.
Tractor Axle Geometry
Tractor Axle Default Mesh
Tractor Axle Refined Mesh
RIVETING MACHINE
The assembly below, which is a model from Grabcad of a riveting machine, was taken directly into Workbench Meshing and a mesh was created with no user input. As you can see the model has 5,282 parts of varying sizes, shapes and complexity. Again without needing to make any adjustments, Workbench Meshing is able to mesh this entire geometry with 6.6 million elements in only a few minutes on a laptop.
Riveting Machine
Riveting Machine
Riveting Machine Default Mesh
Riveting Machine Default Mesh
The summary of the meshing cases are shown below:
| Case | # of Parts | User Operations | # of Elements | # of Nodes | Time [s] |
| Tractor Axle | 58 | 0 | 415,735 | 723,849 | 34 |
| Tractor Axle Refined | 58 | 5 Body Sizings
2 Local Mesh Methods |
930,406 | 1,609,703 | 43 |
| Riveting Machine | 5,282 | 0 | 2,481,275 | 6,670,385 | 790 |
Characteristics of a robust meshing utility are:
- Easy to use with enough power under the hood
- Able to handle complex geometry and/or large number of parts
- Quick and easy user specified mesh operations
- Fast meshing time
ANSYS Meshing checks all of these boxes completely. It has a lot of power under the hood to handle large and/or complex geometry but makes it simple and easy for users to create a strong quality mesh for FEA analysis.
Here is the link to download the geometry used in this model
If you would like a more detailed step-by-step explanation of this process, check out the video below!
If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me at manoj@padtinc.com
Credit to Manoj Abraham from Grabcad for Riveting Machine Model. And no I didn’t choose this model just because he shared my name