Any tip on how to mesh this geometry?

[choxie148]

Hi guys,
I've been struggling to create a mesh for this geometry for couple days now and have yet to succeed once. It's essentially a thin sine strip that's wrapped around a cylindrical rod. I've succeeded in meshing couple times by increasing the thickness of the wrap, but everything fails at its current thickness (0.015mm). For those who can, your help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you very much.

 

[TERIO]

I don't have solidworks to look at your part, but it sounds like you have something where the thickness small compared to the other dimensions. You have a solid model so I assume you are attempting to mesh with solid elements. In general, it is better to treat something where the thickness is small compared to the other dimensions as a shell.

 

[flash3780]

Perhaps you could post a picture; not everyone uses SolidWorks, after all. Nonetheless, Ansys v13 has a Thin Sweep option - perhaps that would work. With such a thin geometry, you'll have to have tiny elements to get any sort of reasonable aspect ratio.

What sort of model are you making? Could you represent the geometry with shell elements?

 

[PriamEngineering]

I would do what terio suggested, treat it as a shell. If you have to mesh as a solid (for some reason) you could try sweeping it using the vsweep command in classic.

http://www.priamengineering.co.uk

 

[choxie148]

Thank you all for your advice, I'll try out the shell method.