Hi,

I am modelling a flow past cylinder with a circular domain of 20xDiameter in radial. I have modelled a 2D cylinder and the mesh around the cylinder is very fine.

My question is, if I want to move to 3D, should I keep the mesh density as in the 2D case or can I corasen the mesh. I found that if I were to keep the same mesh density and extrude to 3D, the number of cells will be out of limit for Fluent 6.3 to read.

Can I coarsen the meah? Will I obtain same accuracy?

Sham.

You could try different mesh resolutions and see if you at any time when going from low amount of cells to a higher amount gets constant values of whatever you are measuring.

Drag for example.

Or compare the drag you get in 3D with your very fine 2D case. There should be some correlation between the 2 drag coefficients and the length of the pipe in 3D.

BR Kasper,

Hi Sham,

If you have symmetricity in the domain, u can try splitting it to reduce the number of cells.

Thanks,

Shanti