Meshing a volume other than vsweep??

[desilemons]

Hiya,

I am a relatively new Ansys Structural user and would like to ask a general question regarding meshing a volume. It is a round shell (like a pipe cut in a 30 degrees pie..if we see from the top of that pipe) with certain thickness having different faces ie the dimensions of the front face (not the circular sides of the pipe)are different than that of the other face of the shell. Till now I have been using the volume sweep command but now as my geometry is really wierd so would like to know if there are any other options to mesh such a volume.

Thanking you in advance.

 

[Drej]

Sounds like your volume can't be VSWEEPed anymore (that's assuming you have start/end faces of different geometries). Other commands to consider are VROTAT, VEXT, VOFFST, and/or VDRAG, but with VSWEEP of course you can mesh an existing geometry - the others are for use when you need to create geometry and mesh at the same time.

I think the command to use in your case is the simple VMESH, but make sure you set the correct parameters prior to this command using MSHKEY and MSHAPE. If you need to have a free mesh (structural analysis) you'll need to use either element 92 or 186 (recommend that you use 186 if your work involves any non-linearities). You still might be able to map mesh the volume (see the MSHKEY command) if you chop the geometry up correctly.

Best of luck,

-- drej --


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[desilemons]

Thanks Drej, Lemme try this.