[Bibill]

Dear all,

I am meshing a buildings array with a cylinder mounted on the centered cube using blockMesh and snappyHexMesh.

The issues I am facing is that when I set snap as false, I manage to obtain sharp edges for the cubes but of course the cylinder will not be well defined (see figure 1)...
Then if I set snap as true, the cylinder is well caught but the corners/edges of the cubes are rounded (see figure 2)...

Do you know how I can have sharp edges for the cubes while being able to have a well defined cylinder ?

Thanks in advance !


Ps: Here is the snappyHexMesh code

 /*--------------------------------*- C++ -*----------------------------------*\
| =========                 |                                                 |
| \\      /  F ield         | OpenFOAM: The Open Source CFD Toolbox           |
|  \\    /   O peration     | Version:  2.1.1                                 |
|   \\  /    A nd           | Web:      www.OpenFOAM.org                      |
|    \\/     M anipulation  |                                                 |
\*---------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
FoamFile
{
    version     2.0;
    format      ascii;
    class       dictionary;
    object      snappyHexMeshDict;
}

// * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * //

// Which of the steps to run
castellatedMesh true;
snap            true;
addLayers       false;

geometry
{

    box1
    {
        type searchableBox;
        min (-0.4275 -0.125 0);
        max ( 0.1275 0.125 0.16);
    }


    buildings.stl
    {
        type triSurfaceMesh;
        name buildings;
    }

    pipe.stl
    {
        type triSurfaceMesh;
        name pipe;
    }

};



// Settings for the castellatedMesh generation.
castellatedMeshControls
{
    maxLocalCells 100000;
    maxGlobalCells 2000000;
    minRefinementCells 2;

    maxLoadUnbalance 0.10;
    nCellsBetweenLevels 2;


    features
    (
        {
            file "buildings.eMesh";
            level 0;
        }

        {
            file "pipe.eMesh";
            level 0;
        }
    );


    refinementSurfaces
    {
        buildings
        {
            // Surface-wise min and max refinement level
            level (3 3);
        }

        pipe
        {
            // Surface-wise min and max refinement level
            level (5 5);
        }
    }

    resolveFeatureAngle 10;


    refinementRegions
    {

        box1
        {
            mode inside;
            levels ((1e15 2));
        }
    }

    locationInMesh (0 0.015 0);
    allowFreeStandingZoneFaces true;
}



// Settings for the snapping.
snapControls
{
    nSmoothPatch 1;
    tolerance 7.0;

    nSolveIter 30;

    nRelaxIter 10;

	strictRegionSnap true;

	multiRegionFeatureSnap true;
}



// Settings for the layer addition.
addLayersControls
{

    relativeSizes true;

    layers
    {
        sphere.stl_firstSolid
        {
            nSurfaceLayers 1;

        }
    }

    // Expansion factor for layer mesh
    expansionRatio 1.0;


    finalLayerThickness 0.3;

    minThickness 0.25;

    nGrow 0;


    featureAngle 90;

    //- Maximum number of snapping relaxation iterations. Should stop
    //  before upon reaching a correct mesh.
    nRelaxIter 5;

    // Number of smoothing iterations of surface normals
    nSmoothSurfaceNormals 1;

    // Number of smoothing iterations of interior mesh movement direction
    nSmoothNormals 3;

    // Smooth layer thickness over surface patches
    nSmoothThickness 10;

    // Stop layer growth on highly warped cells
    maxFaceThicknessRatio 0.5;

    // Reduce layer growth where ratio thickness to medial
    // distance is large
    maxThicknessToMedialRatio 0.3;

    // Angle used to pick up medial axis points
    // Note: changed(corrected) w.r.t 16x! 90 degrees corresponds to 130 in 16x.
    minMedianAxisAngle 90;

    // Create buffer region for new layer terminations
    nBufferCellsNoExtrude 0;



    nLayerIter 50;


    nRelaxedIter 20;
}


meshQualityControls
{
    //- Maximum non-orthogonality allowed. Set to 180 to disable.
    maxNonOrtho 65;

    //- Max skewness allowed. Set to <0 to disable.
    maxBoundarySkewness 20;
    maxInternalSkewness 4;


    maxConcave 80;


    minVol 1e-13;


    minTetQuality 1e-30;

    //- Minimum face area. Set to <0 to disable.
    minArea -1;

    //- Minimum face twist. Set to <-1 to disable. dot product of face normal
    //- and face centre triangles normal
    minTwist 0.05;

    //- minimum normalised cell determinant
    //- 1 = hex, <= 0 = folded or flattened illegal cell
    minDeterminant 0.001;

    //- minFaceWeight (0 -> 0.5)
    minFaceWeight 0.05;

    //- minVolRatio (0 -> 1)
    minVolRatio 0.01;

    //must be >0 for Fluent compatibility
    minTriangleTwist -1;

    //- if >0 : preserve single cells with all points on the surface if the
    //  resulting volume after snapping (by approximation) is larger than
    //  minVolCollapseRatio times old volume (i.e. not collapsed to flat cell).
    //  If <0 : delete always.
    //minVolCollapseRatio 0.5;


    // Advanced

    //- Number of error distribution iterations
    nSmoothScale 4;
    //- amount to scale back displacement at error points
    errorReduction 0.75;



    // Optional : some meshing phases allow usage of relaxed rules.
    // See e.g. addLayersControls::nRelaxedIter.
    relaxed
    {
        //- Maximum non-orthogonality allowed. Set to 180 to disable.
        maxNonOrtho 75;
    }
}


// Advanced

// Flags for optional output
// 0 : only write final meshes
// 1 : write intermediate meshes
// 2 : write volScalarField with cellLevel for postprocessing
// 4 : write current intersections as .obj files
debug 0;


// Merge tolerance. Is fraction of overall bounding box of initial mesh.
// Note: the write tolerance needs to be higher than this.
mergeTolerance 1e-6;


// ************************************************************************* //

[AtoHM]

Providing an edge refinement usually helps for me. Like

features
    (
        {
            file "buildings.eMesh";
            level 1;
        }
...

P.S. This looks like a very generic city to live in

[Ship Designer]

Hello Bibill,

It seems that you haven't assigned any patches to your geometry, i.e. probably everything is in defaultFaces now. For some reason that escapes me snappyHexMesh seems to ignore feature edges if the boundary faces are not assigned to patches. If you just want to try meshing without spending too much time defining the patches first, you may try createPatch or autoPatch. With createPatch you should be able to move all the faces from defaultPatch to an arbitrary patch e.g. of type wall or generic patch. It doesn't matter if all boundary faces are in one single patch and it should be sufficient for sHM to work properly.

Also you can open the *.obj file of your feature edges with ParaView to check whether they are defined correctly.

Good luck