Regular / Irregular MESH
Regular / Irregular MESH
(OP)
Whats the difference between a Regular and Irregular Mesh?
And in what sort of situation would you use each?
What advantages / disadvantages does 1 have over the other?
And in what sort of situation would you use each?
What advantages / disadvantages does 1 have over the other?





RE: Regular / Irregular MESH
RE: Regular / Irregular MESH
Likewise, a less-ordered mesh may be termed "irregular". An irregular mesh may have a higher degree of element distortion, and hence more built-in mathematical error. Tetrahedral elements often produce irregular meshes.
It's always important to pay attention to the shape of your elements. The solver is pretending that the elements are perfect cubes, tetrahedrals, squares, or equilateral triangles in order to obtain a numerical solution. Of course, this isn't the case. The more that the element deviates from those shapes, the more error you'll get in your answer.
Another important thing to realize is that FEA solvers find displacements first, then use those results to determine stresses and strains. So, if you get a bad result due to a highly irregular mesh, the derivative of your bad result will be even farther off.
At the end of the day, good FEA modeling comes down to having appropriate boundary conditions and a sufficient mesh in the appropriate areas to get good results. Of course, the devil is in the details... and bad FEA is, well... dangerous.