How to avoid stair stepping in inflation layer for conformal meshing of adjacent volumes?
Meshing adjacent volumes of different sizes which share a common surface (conformal meshing) could lead to stair stepping for the inflation layer. In most cases this is undesirable, and the preferred behavior is for the inflation layer to wrap around the corner.
Depending on the geometry few possible workarounds are available:
1) Unite the two volumes to form one volume. Once the bodies are united inflation layers will be continuous but it’s possible that only tetrahedral mesh can now be generated.
2) Split the smaller volume into two bodies so that a small volume, 3-5 cell sizes length, volume is formed adjacent to the bigger volume. Unite this small volume with the large one.
3) Use the original two volumes and define inflation layers on the interior face. But for numerical reasons this will not be a good choice for most cases.
Here is an example that shows stair stepping in inflation layers. You can access the relevant files by clicking on this link: Download Files
Please refer to the attached document for more information.