Volume Meshers
Simcenter STAR-CCM+ contains different types of meshers that can be used to generate a volume mesh starting from a suitably prepared surface mesh.
The six types of meshers are:
- Tetrahedral - tetrahedral cell shape based core mesh
- Polyhedral - arbitrary polyhedral cell shape based core mesh
- Trimmed cell mesher - trimmed hexahedral cell shape based core mesh
- Thin Mesher - tetrahedral or polyhedral based prismatic thin mesh
- Prism Layer Mesher - orthogonal prismatic cells next to wall surfaces or boundaries
- Advancing Layer Mesher - polyhedral core mesh, with in-built prismatic layers that advance inward from a polygonal surface mesh.
Prismatic near wall layers can be included with the first three types of mesh that are listed above by including the prism meshing model as part of the volume meshing process. For multi-region cases, a conformal mesh at the interface between one region and the next is currently possible for the tetrahedral and polyhedral mesh types as part of the meshing process. This option is currently not supported for the trimmed cell mesher.
Different mesh types can also be used for different mesh regions if desired by using a different mesh operation for each region. A conformal mesh interface at inter-region boundaries is not supported in this case.
Volumetric controls in the shapes of bricks, spheres, cylinders, and cones can be used during the volume meshing of the core mesh to increase or decrease the local cell density. Arbitrary shaped volumes that are imported as parts can also be used to define the refinement volume. Feature refinement is automatically included in the case of the trimmed cell meshing model.
The extruder mesher can be used with the core mesh methods to extend the original domain by extruding a boundary. The extruder produces orthogonal cell layers from the chosen boundaries. An example use of the extruder mesher would be to extend an inlet duct upstream.
The generalized cylinder mesher can be used with the polyhedral meshing model to generate a mesh on elements in the geometry that are roughly cylindrical. The generalized cylinder mesher generates extruded orthogonal cells along the length of cylindrical boundaries.
In cases where a previous solution exists and the mesh is modified, the solution is automatically mapped to the new mesh in order to restart the simulation.
Various field functions are created during volume meshing operations; some of which are documented in the appropriate reference section.
Once the volume mesh has been built, it can be checked for errors and exported to other packages if desired.