[PaoloBaj]

Goodmorning,

for my thesys I have to run some simulations on a rubber screw extruder. It is composed by a long screw which rotates inside a cylinder. I am creating the mesh using SnappyHexMesh, it is a single region mesh.

In the radially most external parts the screw intersects the cylinder (this is correct because I don't want to simulate the clearance between the screw and the cylinder). I would like to get an higher refinement on the intersection between the screw and the cylinder, do you have any suggestions about how could I do it?

Maybe is possible to extract the intersection between the two surfaces? I was also thinking about importing an additional stl surface/volume to use to define the refinement zone but I don't want this surface imported for the refinement to be snapped

[Yann]

Hello Paolo,

You could use surfaceFeatureExtract to extract the intersection features between your surfaces and use it for refinement in snappyHexMesh:

outputName1
{
    extractionMethod    none;
    surfaces            (surface1.stl surface2.stl);

    // Generate additional intersection features (none | self | region)
    intersectionMethod  self;
}

source: https://develop.openfoam.com/Develop...ureExtractDict

Since you didn't specify which OpenFOAM version you are using, this is for the OpenCFD branch (openfoam.com). I didn't check if it is also possible in the foundation branch (openfoam.org) with surfaceFeatures.

Regards,
Yann