Generating the Mesh

The starting simulation contains predefined mesh operations that are fully set up and ready for execution. These operations prepare the geometry parts and generate appropriate meshes for the fluid and solid regions.

  1. Expand the Geometry > Operations node.


  2. Right-click the Operations node and select Execute All.
    The meshing pipeline executes the following steps:
    • Rotates the wing parts (wing and wing mount) in order to have an initial stroke angle of 70° and an initial pitch angle of -40°.
    • Generates a finite element mesh for the wing components (hexahedral mesh for the wing and tetrahedral mesh for the wing mount).
    • Creates the fluid region by subtracting the hummingbird body from the fluid part.
    • Generates a polyhedral mesh for the parts that are assigned to the fluid and overset regions.
  3. When the mesh generation is complete, create a mesh scene.
During the solution, you can use this mesh scene to visualize the wing motion while the solvers run. For this purpose, you create a derived part that represents the stroke plane in which the sweeping motion is confined:
  1. Right-click the Derived Parts node and select New > Section > Plane Section
  2. In the Create Plane Section dialog, set the following properties:
    Property Setting
    Input Parts Regions > Fluid Domain and Overset Domain (Deselect the wing region)
    Origin [0.0, 0.0, 0.0] m,m,m
    Normal [0.0, 0.0, 1.0] m,m,m
    Displayer No Displayer
  3. Click Create then Close.
  4. Rename the Derived Parts > Plane Section node to Stroke Plane.
In the mesh scene, you define two displayers—one for the wing, and one for the fluid. For the fluid, you visualize the mesh on the hummingbird body boundary and the projection of the fluid and overset meshes on the stroke plane:
  1. Expand the Scenes node.
  2. Right-click the Mesh Scene 1 node and select New Displayer > Mesh.
  3. Rename the Mesh 1 displayer to Wing Mesh and the Mesh 2 displayer to Fluid Mesh.
  4. Edit the Mesh Scene 1 node and set the properties of each displayer as follows:
    Node Property Setting
    Fluid Mesh Opacity 0.5
    Surface Activated
    Parts Parts Regions > Fluid Domain > Boundaries > Hummingbird
    Regions > Fluid Domain > Boundaries > Mount
    Derived Parts > Stroke Plane
    Wing Mesh Color Mode Constant
    Parts Parts Regions > Wing > Boundaries (Deselect the fluid and overset regions)
    Color Color Red
    The mesh appears as shown below: