Gmsh - External Flow Mesh Generation - Airfoil STL file
 

Hi everyone,

I'm exploring Gmsh and its meshing capabilities. It seems powerful enough to help me out, but I can't seem to get the mesh to notice the airfoil at all. I'm importing the geometry as a .stl file as it was one of the available CAD outputs for a 3D model.

My primary goal is to come up with a reliable and repeatable method of generating a mesh to study external flow around a CAD model (for design optimization), so this is my 2D attempt at using Gmsh to build unstructured meshes around airfoils. The only part I'm missing here right now is getting the mesh to 'respect' the existence of the airfoil and mesh around it (as well as refine the mesh around the leading edge, trailing edge, and build a boundary layer with y+ = 1). Does anyone have any idea where I should start on this?

http://i.imgur.com/BlwHubL.png

Bump. Any thoughts, anyone?

I'm new to Gmsh too, and I think that the problem is in the .stl file. Save your CAD model as a .stp file instead and merge/open it, think that's the main way! Then specify the physical groups etc.