[Alex M]

Greetings everyone,

I am doing an Explicit Dynamics Analysis of the Charpy Impact Test.
Due to the high number of Elements and thus a long processing time, I am trying to improve the mesh.

Is it possible to achieve a uniform refinement using Hex elements such in the image below within Ansys Workbench?



The 2nd Image shows the best result I got so far. I would like to apply the method shown in the image above to the middle of the part and get a fewer element number going toward the side edges.



I would highly appreciate your help.
Thank you very much in advance for your answers!

[siw]

In explicit dynamics the long processing time will be set by the time step, which is set by the smallest mesh element so find that first.

[Alex M]

Thank you for your answer, you are absolutely correct, yet the processing time also depends on the total number of elements.

To keep the Hex meshing consistent I have to set an equal number of seeds along the red lines.

By doing this I am not really satisfied with the element shape I get along the vertical line starting from the notch of the specimen.

The results I am getting are Ok but I am wondering if I can achieve the same results by implementing a mesh as shown in the first Image of my initial Post and reducing the total number of elements.




So the question still stands: Can Ansys be used to refine the mesh of the Part like that?

[siw]

I am not sure that ANSYS Meshing would generate the type of mesh elements that you have shown (in yellow). I probably would not break up the domain like you have shown the the red edges because of the narrow elements you have highlighted. I'd just use MultiZone and let Meshing figure it out to get cube elements close to an aspect ratio of 1.

[Alex M]

The narrow elements that I highlighted can be avoided by increasing the number of Seeds on the red lines. Doing this will increase the number of elements towards the side of the Specimen (which I try to avoid).

The MultiZone method will also generate small elements in areas that are not of interest.

I guess it’s time to look into some meshing software.

Thanks for your help!

[siw]

ANSYS Meshing should do the job perfectly well. Upload your Workbench file to see what other can do. Which version of ANSYS are you using?