| RobSie |
November 30, 2016 10:22 |
meshing the geometry of an heat exchanger
1 Attachment(s)
Hello together,
I'm studying mechanical engineering in the 3rd year and at the moment I'm working on the simulation of a heat exchanger. I have some trouble creating the mesh of the exchanger.
The wall thickness of the fins is only 0.1mm, which seems to be a problem for snappyHexMesh. The meshes i created so far have a lot of gaps in it, even if I increase the level of detail, there is not really a great improvement.
How is it possible to mesh such thin geometries?
This is the latest try:
Code:
/*--------------------------------*- C++ -*----------------------------------*\
| ========= | |
| \\ / F ield | OpenFOAM: The Open Source CFD Toolbox |
| \\ / O peration | Version: v3.0+ |
| \\ / A nd | Web: www.OpenFOAM.com |
| \\/ M anipulation | |
\*---------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
FoamFile
{
version 2.0;
format ascii;
class dictionary;
object snappyHexMeshDict;
}
// * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * //
// Which of the steps to run
castellatedMesh true;
snap true;
addLayers false;
// Geometry. Definition of all surfaces. All surfaces are of class
// searchableSurface.
// Surfaces are used
// - to specify refinement for any mesh cell intersecting it
// - to specify refinement for any mesh cell inside/outside/near
// - to 'snap' the mesh boundary to the surface
geometry
{
triangle.stl
{
type triSurfaceMesh;
name triangle;
}
};
// Settings for the castellatedMesh generation.
castellatedMeshControls
{
// Refinement parameters
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
// If local number of cells is >= maxLocalCells on any processor
// switches from from refinement followed by balancing
// (current method) to (weighted) balancing before refinement.
maxLocalCells 100000;
// Overall cell limit (approximately). Refinement will stop immediately
// upon reaching this number so a refinement level might not complete.
// Note that this is the number of cells before removing the part which
// is not 'visible' from the keepPoint. The final number of cells might
// actually be a lot less.
maxGlobalCells 2000000;
// The surface refinement loop might spend lots of iterations
// refining just a few cells. This setting will cause refinement
// to stop if <= minimumRefine are selected for refinement. Note:
// it will at least do one iteration (unless the number of cells
// to refine is 0)
minRefinementCells 10;
// Number of buffer layers between different levels.
// 1 means normal 2:1 refinement restriction, larger means slower
// refinement.
nCellsBetweenLevels 2;
// Explicit feature edge refinement
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
// Specifies a level for any cell intersected by its edges.
// This is a featureEdgeMesh, read from constant/triSurface for now.
features
(
{
file "triangle.eMesh";
level 3;
}
);
// Surface based refinement
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
// Specifies two levels for every surface. The first is the minimum level,
// every cell intersecting a surface gets refined up to the minimum level.
// The second level is the maximum level. Cells that 'see' multiple
// intersections where the intersections make an
// angle > resolveFeatureAngle get refined up to the maximum level.
refinementSurfaces
{
triangle
{
// Surface-wise min and max refinement level
level (3 5);
faceZone triangle;
cellZone triangle;
cellZoneInside inside;
}
}
// Resolve sharp angles
resolveFeatureAngle 30;
// Region-wise refinement
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
// Specifies refinement level for cells in relation to a surface. One of
// three modes
// - distance. 'levels' specifies per distance to the surface the
// wanted refinement level. The distances need to be specified in
// descending order.
// - inside. 'levels' is only one entry and only the level is used. All
// cells inside the surface get refined up to the level. The surface
// needs to be closed for this to be possible.
// - outside. Same but cells outside.
refinementRegions
{
//refinementBox
//{
// mode inside;
// levels ((1E15 4));
//}
}
// Mesh selection
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
// After refinement patches get added for all refinementSurfaces and
// all cells intersecting the surfaces get put into these patches. The
// section reachable from the locationInMesh is kept.
// NOTE: This point should never be on a face, always inside a cell, even
// after refinement.
locationInMesh (0.01 0.00495 0.0076);
// Whether any faceZones (as specified in the refinementSurfaces)
// are only on the boundary of corresponding cellZones or also allow
// free-standing zone faces. Not used if there are no faceZones.
allowFreeStandingZoneFaces false;
}
// Settings for the snapping.
snapControls
{
//- Number of patch smoothing iterations before finding correspondence
// to surface
nSmoothPatch 3;
//- Relative distance for points to be attracted by surface feature point
// or edge. True distance is this factor times local
// maximum edge length.
tolerance 1.0;
//- Number of mesh displacement relaxation iterations.
nSolveIter 30;
//- Maximum number of snapping relaxation iterations. Should stop
// before upon reaching a correct mesh.
nRelaxIter 5;
//- Highly experimental and wip: number of feature edge snapping
// iterations. Leave out altogether to disable.
// Of limited use in this case since faceZone faces not handled.
nFeatureSnapIter 10;
}
// Settings for the layer addition.
addLayersControls
{
relativeSizes true;
// Per final patch (so not geometry!) the layer information
layers
{
}
// Expansion factor for layer mesh
expansionRatio 1.3;
// Wanted thickness of final added cell layer. If multiple layers
// is the thickness of the layer furthest away from the wall.
// Relative to undistorted size of cell outside layer.
// See relativeSizes parameter.
finalLayerThickness 1;
// Minimum thickness of cell layer. If for any reason layer
// cannot be above minThickness do not add layer.
// Relative to undistorted size of cell outside layer.
minThickness 0.1;
// If points get not extruded do nGrow layers of connected faces that are
// also not grown. This helps convergence of the layer addition process
// close to features.
// Note: changed(corrected) w.r.t 17x! (didn't do anything in 17x)
nGrow 0;
// Advanced settings
// When not to extrude surface. 0 is flat surface, 90 is when two faces
// are perpendicular
featureAngle 30;
// Maximum number of snapping relaxation iterations. Should stop
// before upon reaching a correct mesh.
nRelaxIter 3;
// Number of smoothing iterations of surface normals
nSmoothSurfaceNormals 1;
// Number of smoothing iterations of interior mesh movement direction
nSmoothNormals 3;
// Smooth layer thickness over surface patches
nSmoothThickness 2;
// Stop layer growth on highly warped cells
maxFaceThicknessRatio 0.5;
// Reduce layer growth where ratio thickness to medial
// distance is large
maxThicknessToMedialRatio 1;
// Angle used to pick up medial axis points
// Note: changed(corrected) w.r.t 17x! 90 degrees corresponds to 130 in 17x.
minMedianAxisAngle 90;
// Create buffer region for new layer terminations
nBufferCellsNoExtrude 0;
// Overall max number of layer addition iterations. The mesher will exit
// if it reaches this number of iterations; possibly with an illegal
// mesh.
nLayerIter 50;
}
// Generic mesh quality settings. At any undoable phase these determine
// where to undo.
meshQualityControls
{
#include "meshQualityDict"
// Advanced
//- Number of error distribution iterations
nSmoothScale 4;
//- Amount to scale back displacement at error points
errorReduction 0.75;
}
// Advanced
// Merge tolerance. Is fraction of overall bounding box of initial mesh.
// Note: the write tolerance needs to be higher than this.
mergeTolerance 1e-6;
// ************************************************************************* //
Thank you for your help!
Robin |
