Tetrameshing a Volume in a Single Step - HM-3230

For this tutorial, it is recommended that you complete the introductory tutorial Getting Started with
HyperMesh - HM-1000. Familiarity with the topology display of surface edges and geometry cleanup
tools in HyperMesh is useful, although not required.

Tetrahedral elements are solid finite elements with four triangular faces. Commonly used to model solid
parts, tetrahedral meshes can often be significantly easier to create than hexa-penta models, especially
on complex geometry. With modern finite element solvers, the results from analyses using second
order tetrahedral elements are often just as accurate as those using hex elements.

HyperMesh provides two methods of generating a tetrahedral element mesh. The standard tetramesher
is not discussed in this tutorial. The volume tetra mesher, which is the object of this tutorial, works
directly with surface geometry to automatically generate a tetrahedral mesh without further interaction
from the user. Even with complex geometry, this method can often generate a high quality solid mesh
quickly and easily.

This tutorial introduces some geometry cleanup techniques for tetrameshing using the geom cleanup
panel, and presents the volume tetra meshing method in the tetramesh panel. For more information
regarding the panels used in this tutorial, please refer to the Panels section of the on-line help, or click
help while in the panel to activate its context sensitive help.

This tutorial requires about 15 minutes to complete and uses a file located in the
<install_directory>/tutorials/hm directory. If you are unable to locate this directory at your
site, see Finding the Installation Directory <install_directory>, or contact your system administrator.

The model used for this tutorial is a housing (see image below):

Housing model

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 To cleanup the geometry for tetrameshing:

Geometry cleanup for generating a tetrahedral mesh takes a slightly different approach than cleanup for
surface meshing. The primary objective is to first create a completely enclosed volume of surfaces, then
suppress any unnecessary features that might force the generation of less than optimum elements.

1. From the files panel, retrieve the file <install_directory>/tutorials/hm/volume_tetra.hm.

2. Use the Disp page of the macro menu to set Vis opts: 3.
3. Observe the model using the view controls from the permanent menu.
With the geometry now displayed with topology colors, we see there are no free (red) edges in the
model. Since no free edges need to be combined, we only need to look into suppressing edges that
will cause poor element quality.

Note If you are not familiar with the topology display of surface edges, review the topic
HyperMesh Geometry Terminology from the on line help.

4. Restore view1 using the view panel from the permanent menu.
Observe how the edges, shown in the figure below, if left unsuppressed, would result in narrow sliver
elements or elements with a high aspect ratio.

Edges causing sliver elements

5. Use the geom cleanup panel to toggle these edges.

- From the Geom page, select the geom cleanup panel.

- From the edges sub-panel, select the toggle function.

- With the line selector active, suppress the edges shown in the figure above.

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 Make sure that you suppress all similar instances of these edges around the outside of the part.
6. Spend a few minutes identifying and suppressing other unnecessary features.
There are no hard and fast rules defining what should or should not be suppressed. You want to
minimize thin, narrow surfaces or surfaces that would otherwise force the formation of small or
narrow tria elements.
For this model, use for example an element size of 8 units, and identify features for which the
dimensions would be less than 8 units using for example the distance panel from the Geom page.
See the figure below for one example of edges that can be suppressed.

Suppressing additional edges

Hint A powerful technique for finding problem areas is to use the automesh panel in interactive mode
to preview a mesh on the surfaces. Use your target element size and review areas with a node
density of 1. These are an indication that the feature may be too small for the element size you
plan on using. This helps identify any short surface edges to be suppressed or any fixed points that
should be combined.
In this section, we performed some geometry cleanup on our part, making sure that the surfaces would
enclose a volume, and suppressing any unnecessary edges that would cause sliver elements.

To use the volume tetramesher:

The volume tetramesher requires as input a single volume completely enclosed by a single layer of
surfaces. Surface overlaps, T-connections, internal boundaries or holes are not allowed and will result in
errors.

In this section, use the volume tetra sub-panel from the tetramesh panel to tetramesh the housing.
Experiment with the various options to understand how they influence the final mesh.

1. Use the Disp page of the macro menu to set Vis opts: 0.

2. Use the volume tetra sub-panel to tetramesh the model with an element size of 12.

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 - From the 3D page, select the tetramesh panel.

- Select the volume tetra sub-panel.

- With the surf selector active, select one of the surfaces in the model.

The rest of the connected surfaces are selected automatically.

Below the surf entity selector, the settings for 2D: and 3D: control the type of element that will be
created for the surface mesh and solid mesh of the part.

- Set 2D: to trias and 3D: to tetras.

- In the field for element size =, enter a value of 12.

- Leave the boxes for use proximity and use curvature unchecked for now.

- Set the two right switches to generate mesh normally and standard.

- Click tetmesh to create the tetramesh.

- Use the Disp page of the macro menu to set Gfx: Per.

This shades the elements.

Initial tetramesh

The volume tetramesher creates two components whenever it is used. One is for the shell mesh,
and the other is for the tetramesh. When new components are created in HyperMesh, they default to
having the wireframe display mode. Using the macro changes their setting to use shaded with mesh
lines.

If you wish, you can go to the disp panel to review the components that were created by the volume
tetramesher.
Take a moment to inspect the mesh pattern that the volume tetramesher created.
Next, explore the results when the 2D element type is changed.

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 - Click reject.

The mesh, along with the components that were created, should be deleted.

3. Repeat step 2, setting 2D: to R-trias this time, and leaving all other options unchanged.
Notice how using right angle triangular elements produces different mesh patterns.

4. Set 2D: back to trias, and tetra mesh the model using curvature.

- Check the box for use curvature to activate this option.

Two additional fields appear.

- Set elem feature ang = to 30.

- Set min elem size = to 3.0.

- Pick one of the surfaces and click tetmesh.

Tetramesh with curvature settings

The use curvature option causes more elements to be created along areas of high surface
curvature based on the minimum element size and feature angle you specify. Curved areas such as
fillets will thus have more and smaller elements to capture those features with higher resolution.

- Click reject.

- Explore the effect of min elem size = 2.0 and elem feature ang = 30.

- Reject this mesh.

- Try min elem size = 3.0 and elem feature ang = 20.

- Reject this mesh.

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 5. Tetramesh the model with use proximity:

- Check the box for use curvature and set min elem size = 3.0 and elem feature ang = 30.

- Check the box for use proximity.

- Select the surfaces and click tetmesh.

Compare the resulting mesh (see figure below) to the one obtained earlier when using the use
curvature option alone (see previous figure above)

Tetramesh with proximity

The use proximity setting causes the mesh to become more refined in areas where surfaces are
smaller and have more of them meeting up. The result is that for surfaces with shorter edges, which
will create smaller elements, the surrounding surfaces will have a smaller mesh in that area as well
so that there isn’t too large of a transition made in adjacent elements.

Note Other options on this sub-panel allow some degree of control over the speed or quality
optimization and growth rate (internal element size). The growth rate options are:

Standard Consistent layer thickness based on surface mesh size.

Aggressive Increased thickness with successive layers.

Gradual Decreased thickness with successive layers.

Interpolate Used to transition between different surface mesh sizes.

User controlled User specified values for growth rate and initial layer thickness.

In this section, we experimented with some of the options available in the volume tetra sub-panel. We
saw how some of the options with the volume tetramesh function have been optimized to enable you to
quickly and easily create a good quality tetrahedral element mesh that accurately represents the
geometry of the model.

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 This concludes this tutorial. You may discard this model or save it to your working directory for your own
reference.
In this tutorial, we introduced the volume tetramesher available in HyperMesh. We did not cover the
standard tetramesher, which requires as input a surface mesh of tria or quad elements, then provides
you with a number of options to control the resulting tetrahedral mesh. This provides a great deal of
control over the tetrahedral mesh, and provides the means to generate a tetrahedral mesh for even the
most complex models.

However, the quality of the resulting tetrahedral mesh is directly dependent on the quality and size of the
surface mesh it starts with. Thus, the majority of the time spent in creating a tetra mesh is taken up with
cleaning geometry and creating the surface mesh to make sure it is of good quality. While this method
takes more effort that the volume tetra meshing method, the advantage is increased control over the
meshing process.

For more information on the standard tetramesher, refer to the tutorials Creating a Tria Mesh for
Tetrameshing - HM-3190, and Generating 3-D Tetrahedral Elements - HM-3210. These two tutorials also
address tetrahedral element quality and re-meshing.
See HyperMesh Tutorials for a complete list of tutorials.

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