close stl file, inflow calculation, how to generete mesh?
 

Hi, I am a new user of OF. Now I want to calculate the blood flow in a part of carotid artery. But I do not know how to generate the mesh.

The stl file of the artery was obtained from CT scan. It was a closed geomerty. So I need to cut the stl file to generate both inlet and outlet planes before meshing. I have tried gmesh, engrid...,but it seems to me that all those softwares can only generate mesh but can not modify the stl file.

If I can divide the stl to 3 parts: wall, inlet, outlet, Gmesh should be able to give me the initial mesh with lables. But so far, I have not found an opensource software that can cut stl files.

I used to use Ansys to calculate the same problem, there was no problem. I transfered icem-cfd mesh to OF, and used OF as a solver, there was no problem either.

Now, I want to find a way to replace ICEM-CFD, and do everything using opensource code. Does anyone have a clue, greatly appreciate.

Try Blender. Its a bit of a learning curve, but it has all the required functionality.

Alternatively, you can just stick some separately defined plane geometries between the inlet/outlet faces and the rest of the mesh using the foam native snappyHexMesh tool. Let me know if you need more info on how to do this.

Thanks :), you gave me a very improtant clue.

I will try "Blender" first as caelinux has this software installed. Just want to make sure that the purpose of using "Blender" is to cut in/out based on a stl file and output 3 stl files for the mesh generation (gmsh). Is that correct?

Well, we don't use gmsh, we use snappyHexMesh almost exclusively, so I cannot comment on that aspect. For the rest, yes Blender has the capability to do what you want.