Having serious difficulty generating a mesh inside a pipe
 

Hello Guys,

I am really new to OpenFOAM. I need to simulate a fluid flow inside a tube. Please recommend a CAD software where i can design a geometry and download in seperate .stl files? eg: inlet, outlet and the tube

Thanks in advance!

Salome is a commonly used CAD software for use with openFoam. It has it's own meshing capabilities too.

AutoCAD, FreeCAD, OpenFoam's own BlockMesh, Salome.

You want seperate .stl files for your mesh? That might not work with OpenFoam. But you could do the meshing with salome, which can create different patches from an stl.

Maybe I do not get your statement correctly but *.STL files are a common geometry data for OpenFOAM in combination with snappyHexMesh.

You are right Tobias. Seems my answer was misleading.

As i understand OP want's to use seperate .stl files to form one geometry. From my experience, using three seperate cylinders to form a larger one, snappyHexMesh struggles to mesh multiple .stl files into a meaningful topography. I, at least, never got it working.

Thanks for the reply guys! I used salome to separate the geometry.

New to OpenFOAM Meshing -- Need Help
 

Hi Guys!

As a part of Masters Thesis, I have to simulate a fluid flow through 1mm thick curved pipe using OpenFOAM. I created my geometry using SolidWorks (Screenshot attached herewith). I created separate geometry for pipe, inlet and outlet and assembled in SolidWorks and finally saved it in .stl file. Correct me if did anything wrong as I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to OpenFOAM.

I tried SnappyHexMesh, ICEM and also Salome to create the mesh but couldn't create a perfect mesh. I know that I am doing it wrong but and I am exhausted searching for a solution. My deadline for Thesis submission is very near and I'm going no where with my simulation.

I hope someone can help me on what is the best way to mesh a geometry such as mine and which is the best software to do so. And also please recommend if there's any tutorial available for this type of meshing.

Thanks in advance!

Hello jeev1,
OpenFOAM is mostly learned by trial and error.
Just try this if it helps you in anyway https://holzmann-cfd.de/openfoam/vid...meshing-a-pipe.
you can even try salome tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5tyw1tP_U0

Regards,
Raj

Make sure that your object, including the inlet/outlet patches, is watertight. Otherwise snappyHexMesh will not create a mesh from it.

hopscotch cylinder hex meshing
 

http://matveichev.blogspot.com/2013/...with-gmsh.html


For me this enlightened me to start building arbitrary piping hex meshes.


Hope you like it too,


Tom.