Patch Conform or Independent
 

Hi All,

Is there any danger in using a patch independent mesh other than losing fidelity in your geometry?

Patch Independent seems to keep every detail of my geometry, plus appears to be rather well structured compared to patch conforming. I imagine this would be good for speed of computation.

Is there any danger in this reporting wrong answers due to some complication?

Thanks

All meshers, when properly used, can conform to a surface. Of course the whole point of meshing is to loose fidelity, the issue is to keep the loss to an acceptable amount.

So both the patch independant and patch conforming methods, when correctly used, can generate good meshes. Use the mesh quality metrics to assess the quality of the mesh.

Thanks. This indicates I need to look elsewhere for the phenomena I'm seeing. Basically the turbulence and mass/momentum are converging, but via constantly fluctuating convergence. It basically looks like a sine wave that is heading downward. Would this likely be mesh not being fine enough? Or a sign of strong transient behaviour.

Edit: It seems to smooth out somewhat with time scale an order or two of magnitude less.

Your question now is covered by an FAQ:

http://www.cfd-online.com/Wiki/Ansys...gence_criteria