[geod]

Hi all,

Currently I am trying to tackle a problem with a meshing in ICEM CFD, of a double pipe heat exchanger, with the inner pipe having a wire wrapped around it. I have managed to do this as an unstructured mesh but the quality is so poor that it will be un-usable in fluent so I would like to try structured. I have managed to generate a structured mesh for the tube in tube without the twisted wire surrounding the inner pipe, however am struggling to figure out how to go about this problem with the helical wire. Any help would be much appreciated!

Here are a couple pics of the geometry I am looking to tackle:

g.jpggg.jpgggg.jpg

Cheers

[FJSJ]

Hi geod,

I think you should try to block the wire with an o-grid and then extrude it along the curve. You have the option under "create block". Then, you can split it with multiple planes and associate the different edges to the wire shape.

[geod]

Hi FJ,

Thanks for the reply. I understand the use of extrude along the curve, and think I'd be able to perform this method if blocking the twisted wire alone, however when combined with the blocking of the two pipes is where I get bit confused. I have blocked the two pipes but finding it quite hard to figure out how to then split it to mesh the wire. As you can see the wire's face is nearly perpendicular to the face of the pipes.

How can I go about splitting the blocking from the pipes to meet this face?

Thanks

g.jpg

[geod]

still not made any progress on this help would be much appreciated! I need to mesh the two pipes and the twisted wire