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[rgarcia60]

Hello,

I'm currently trying to mesh a long tube with bends (heat exchanger) along with the fluids inside and outside the tube. I'm interested in getting a conformal mesh between the tube and the inside fluid (I don't care about the outside fluid so much). I'm first creating the midsurface of the tube, then I create a shared topology between the midsurface and the inside body, and then I create the mesh. To my demise, I don't get a conformal mesh (connected nodes) where the midsurface and the body meet like I would want to.  

Can anybody help as to what I'm missing? I have tried sharing the topology between the tube and the inside fluid using spaceclaim and designmodeler, but both don't yield a conformal mesh.

Warm Regards,

Richard

[Aniket Chavan]

Shell elements have 6 degrees of freedom while solid has only 3. It is not recommended to merge nodes of solid with Shell, and the software does not allow such an option.

Why do you want to share the nodes? Wouldn't the contacts work for you? You can use same sizing on the faces to keep the mesh similar. You can also try match controls to exactly match the mesh, but I doubt it will work given that area of midsurface and outer surface of the fluid is not the same.

-Aniket

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[rgarcia60]

Hi Aniket,

I'm planning to solve a CFD problem with this setup and I seem to understand it's strongly recommended to share topology between bodies so that a conformal mesh is obtained.

Due to not being able to share topology as explained above and in your response, I switched to having a solid instead of a midsurface for the pipe but I'm struggling to get at least 2 elements in the through-thickness direction while maintaining hex elements. Currently I have 1 element in the thickness direction.  Any suggestions?

Warm regards,

Richard  

[Aniket Chavan]

Please check if changing number of divisions makes difference. If it doesn't specify source manually and then retry.

-Aniket

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[rgarcia60]

Thank you—I'll try that.

Regards,

Richard