Strategy creating mesh 1 element thick
 

I am doing a 2D simulation using CFX. In CFX I can't actually do a true 2D study so I need to generate a mesh in the ANSYS mesher which is just a single element thick.
The simulation is of an ellipse within a uniform flow. The ellipse has height 0.1m and length 2m.
My current meshing strategy is to use a sweep method to sweep from side of the domain to the other (I have set this domain width to 0.01m) with a single element.
This works fine, the problem occurs when I attempt to create an inflation around the ellipse. I choose to inflate the sweep method selecting the sweep source face and the edge of the ellipse on this source face for the geometry and boundary.
Now the mesher will either fail entirely or produce a mesh but carry out the sweep correctly. In the case that a mesh is generated I get the following warning:
"Copying the source mesh to the target face failed because of poor quality."
The mesh on the target face created therefore differs from the source is of lower quality as shown in the attached image of the ellipse leading edge.
The mesh on the source face appears to be of adequate quality.
Does anyone have any advice on an appropriate strategy to avoid this problem?
thanks
Oli