Meshing
Meshing
(OP)
I was wondering how to establish the correct meshing size in FEA. Where should a smaller mesh size be used and how much smaller should it be? Is it always best to use as small of a mesh as possible to get the most accurate results? Any tips or good books/articles on meshing would be appreciated also.





RE: Meshing
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: Meshing
Smaller mesh sizes won't always solve your problem. If you're looking at fatigue in a corner for example, making your mesh smaller and smaller will just force your calculated stress higher and higher. Instead, post-processing may be suitable. Don't always rely on making your mesh smaller to solve your problem, it's all about knowing what problem you're interested in solving, and refining your mesh to suit.
Cheers,
Marty
RE: Meshing
RE: Meshing
RE: Meshing
It's also not always the geometry alone that might determine a mesh. Any rapidly changing aspect of your model (like loads) might also require a localized increase mesh density to capture the effects of load/stress gradients.
I found a good (free) online intro to FEA here.
RE: Meshing
consider too, FEA goes places that hand calcs couldn't, but things built with "good" hand calcs haven't fallen down, ie hand calcs are not bad (just as all FEA aren't good). this is leading to "why do you want a perfect stress from an imperfect analysis tool ?"
linear FEA is a very useful tool, but it's answers (like hand calcs) need to be used with experience. I don't think you should consider it'll give you answer to be right with any size mesh.
something to consider is how the structure is responding to the loads ... an aircraft fuselage can be reasonably well modelled with quite large elements.
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