Guidelines for Generating Tetrahedral+Prism Meshes in ICEM

Tetra Mesh: 1. Generate the tetrahedral mesh in ICEM. (To generate the tetra mesh select MeshVolume Meshing. It opens up a window with some Default settings for Mesh type, Iterations, Min Quality. Retain these setting and press apply. This creates the Tet Mesh). 2. Once the mesh is generated Inspect the mesh for obvious errors, such as elements that are in the wrong family, and correct any problems. (To inspect the mesh for errors select Edit MeshCheck Mesh. Retain the default options and press Apply). After this smooth the mesh. To smooth the mesh select Edit Mesh Smooth Mesh Globally and assign the following parameters: You may need to use 10 or more iterations but start with 5. Smooth the mesh using the quality parameter, using a value of 0.4.Start with a quality parameter of 0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, 0.35, 0.4.Smooth until the worst element has a quality of greater than 0.25. If you cant get to 0.25 that is an indication of a problem with the mesh. Prism Meshing: Generate the prism mesh in ICEM. To set the global prism parameters select Mesh Set Global Mesh Size Prism Meshing Parameters. In that specify the following: The growth law = exponential The number of layers = 21 MAKE SURE THAT THE PARAMETERS INITIAL HEIGHT AND HEIGHT RATIO IN THE GLOBAL PRISM SETTINGS ARE BLANK The following values are to be set in MeshMesh Prisms .In the Smoothing options section set the following:

Number of surface smoothing steps Triangle quality type Number of volume smoothing steps Max directional smoothing steps First layer smoothing steps

= = = = =

0 Laplace 0 5 5

Click on the tab of Select Parts for Prism layers. This opens up a window where one needs to define the parts on which the prism mesh has to be generated. Check the boxes next to these families and press Apply and close the window. Click on Apply to start the prism mesh. Once this is done carry out the Mesh check again similar to that of the Tet Mesh. After the mesh check is completed improve the quality of the mesh by smoothing. To smooth the mesh select Edit Mesh Smooth Mesh Globally. It opens up a window in which the following parameters have to be assigned: You may need to use 10 or more iterations but start with 5. Smooth the mesh using the quality parameter values of 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 etc. and by freezing the Penta elements. Check the quality. Unfreeze the Penta elements now and change the quality to 0.1 and smooth the mesh again. Smooth until the worst element has a quality of greater than 0.01. If you can smooth to a higher value then do so.