Learning Forum

[fraser.shields]

I want to perform a sweep mesh across a thin walled structure starting from the the top face and ending at the bottom face along the z-axis (see pictures). The wall size is only 8um, wheres the bulk diameter of the construct is 6.5mm. I tried to create a sweep mesh with 20 divisions, and a global element size of 1um, howvwer keep getting the error message "The mesh generation did not complete due to poor quality elements or incorrect input. Please try meshing with another mesh method or different mesh options. ". COuld this be due to having to many elements for the student version of the software? What else might be causing the error?>

[Rob]

I'm sure I've seen another model like this recently. At 8microns the CAD kernal has probably had a problem and you may not have a valid geometry volume. Meshing may also struggle with the tolerance. 

Are you looking to model this in CFD or Mechanical? For the latter look at shells, for the former is the above the wall or flow path? 

[fraser.shields]

Thank you for your response. I'm looking to model this in another FE software called FEBio. I want to perform a compression analysis in the z-direction of this thin walled structure impregnated with a biphasic gel-like structure, with the aim of computing the fluid pressures and stresses within the gel-like structure. So I believe this would be analogous to analysing the problem in Ansys mechanical.

[Rob]

OK. If you used Mechanical I think you can model the gel zones as solids and the lattice using shells so you avoid the thickness issue. 

If you are in Meshing, check for and then delete any contact pairs and see if that helps. Otherwise you may need to scale the domain up so the shell is 0.8 or 8mm thick. You then need to scale the mesh in the solver.