Modeling cylinders with brick elements - possible?

[shimo1989]

Hi,

I'm trying to mesh a hollow cylinder in ANSYS using mapped meshing, but ANSYS doesn't seem to be able to do this. According to the documentation, it appears that this is because ANSYS requires 3 sets of 2 opposite faces on the model, like a cube.

So I guess my question is, how exactly may I mesh cylinders? Are there any tricks (aside from manual meshing, I haven't found a way to connect manually meshed areas to automatically meshed areas in an easy way) to achieving this?

The picture is basically what I want the cylinder to look like.

 

[shimo1989]

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks everyone!

 

[kan123]

The proposed mesh should be possible. It may be that ANSYS wants you to put one or more seams in the cylinder so that each area can be defined by a closed loop. If meshing the volume still fails, you might try meshing the end with shell elements and then extrude (VEXT) to make solid elements. You may have to do a NUMMRG when you are finished to seal up the seams.

 

[CornishPasty]

Meshing the circular cross section with SHELLS or MESH200's then extruding is the way to go for sure.

Don't try to VMESH the cylinder with bricks.