Edge Mesh Attributes

Example of Absolute Mesh Size along an Edge

An absolute mesh size type assigns a maximum element size along the selected edge. Below is an example using an airfoil where an absolute mesh size of 0.001 is assigned to the leading edge of the airfoil. The model in this example is of a simple airfoil shown below.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

The airfoil has a chord length of 0.3 meters and a span of 0.45 meters. The edges of interest need to be identified before mesh size specifications can be assigned to them. By default, unless otherwise specified, all edges in the model will be grouped as default upon loading of the geometry in AcuConsole.

Figure 3.

To identify the edge, right-click on Edges and select New. Create as many new groups as there are edges which will be assigned mesh properties. Rename the edge groups, if desired.

For this example, there are two edge groups specified, the leading edge is one group and the trailing edge is the second group. All other edges are left in the default group as they will not be used for meshing purposes.

Figure 4.

The absolute mesh size along the leading edge is defined by right-clicking on the edge group, or double clicking on the name. This will bring up a panel where the mesh requirements are specified.

The Edge Mesh Attribute panel is much like the panels for surface and volume mesh size. The mesh size type is defined by either Absolute, Relative, Absolute Expression, Relative Expression, Absolute Anisotropic or Relative Anisotropic. This example uses Absolute as the mesh size type to specify the mesh along the leading edge.

The mesh resulting from the edge specifications listed above is shown below. Notice the leading edge of the airfoil has a tight cluster of elements along it.

Figure 5.

The other mesh size specifications work the same way the surface mesh size specifications do.