[jairoandres]

Dear All,

I am using OpenFOAM for CHT studies on PCBs. In order to optimize the case preparation time, I am constructing the whole PCB, LED's and other components with searchable surfaces. I do not really want to create independient STLs for each component as it would be very time-consuming.

I can quickly build a case using these searchable surfaces to describe refinementRegions in the background mesh in snappyHexMesh, and then use topoSet to create the different cell regions from these refined regions.

However, as refinementRegions only works with Castellated mesh (does not snap), some small features like simplified LEDs and copper layers have an incorrect size, which greatly affects the simulations.

On the other hand, using these searchable surfaces to determine refinementSurfaces does the job neatly as the mesh is snapped. But naturally, removes either the rest of the background mesh (air) or the solids.

Is there a way to either
1. Force snappyHexMesh to perform snapping in refinementRegions?
2. Prevent snappyHexMesh to remove mesh when using refinementSurfaces?
3. Perform boolean operations between searchableSurfaces inside snappyHexMesh? I had in mind something like selecting all cells and creating a new surface removing all solid regions from the background box?

Thank you all,

Jairo

[jairoandres]

Well, I think I found a good-working solution.

Following one tutorial of OpenFOAM, (one of the CHT-based called something like snappyHeater...), I realized that given a hollow STL, snappyHexMesh can perform surfaceRefinements without explicitly removing mesh from the domain. Therefore, I used a searchableSurface called plate, which is basically a finite plane. In that way, then, when topoSet is used afterwards, the regions given by the searchableBox completely match the refined surface region, and the resulting cell zones have the proper thickness.