Selective Shared Topology / Conformal Mesh
 

I'm working with ANSYS design modeler / mesh and would like to share topology between bodies on only one face.

For a simplified geometry, consider 3 bodies. Body A is a cylinder with 1 meter diameter, Body B is a ring surrounding Body A with an inner diameter of 1 meter, and an outer diameter of 2 meters. Body C lies below A and B, and is a cylinder with a diameter of 2 meters.

Sharing topology between B and C is easy, I just group them into one part. The problem is that I only want the lower face of A to share topology with the upper face of C. I don't want to share topology between A and B.

The reason that I want to mesh this way is because I've imprinted some faces on the outside of Body A that I plan to use to represent inlet nozzles. Fluid flows into A through those nozzles, down into C, then up through B. I want to be able to use a swept mesh for B and C, but can't do it for A because of those faces. If I share topology between all 3 bodies, then I can't use a swept mesh for Body B either. I just want a conformal mesh on the interface between Body A and Body C.

Slice upto the point you want the mesh to not be conformal, there might be a better way of doing this though.

Just to update this thread, after I posted this problem I submitted a service request to ANSYS. There isn't a way to have two bodies share topology on one face but not the other in the current version. I requested that they add that feature to the next version, but we'll see if that ever happens.

One way to solve the problem that I was having would be to use a revolved cut to remove a very small sliver between the two bodies that I didn't want to share topology. For example, I could have created a sliver with a 0.1 degree angle between the two faces that I don't want to share topology so that they wouldn't actually be touching each other.