Physics Preference – Mechanical or CFD

- February 14, 2020 at 11:20 am
  
  Wasif
  Subscriber
  
  Hello,
  
  Right now I am doing a steady state analysis on solid bodies with no fluids. I am using just two temperature boundary conditions on two ends. This is similar to analyzing how heat flows from one end to another. This analysis would later be expanded to transient as well for a simulation of around 1000 seconds.
  
  While meshing, I noticed that when I use fine global settings with Physics Preference - Mechanical, I get a somewhat good mesh but I would still need to manually mesh certain parts in order to obtain better quality metrics such as element quality. However, when I set the physics preference to CFD, I get a very structured and fine mesh that takes into account all the relevant edges and curves in the complex geometry.
  
  Since the setting only affects meshing, should I just select the physics preference as CFD, because by default it sets up a pretty good mesh in the first place, or should I stick with mechanical and try to mesh regions manually to improve their quality?
- February 14, 2020 at 4:16 pm
  
  Rob
  Forum Moderator
  
  The setting alters some default values to give you a good mesh (well assuming you use sensible settings) for the physics you want. For a CFD model I'd use the CFD setting, and for Mech I'd use those. CFD has different (generally stricter) requirements than Mechanical as we also need to deal with convection & diffusion.