Tip/Trick#:

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769
HyperMesh
HW9.0andGreater
Meshing
Meshingwithminimumedgedeviation

Createmeshwithminimumedgedeviation
Surfaces with curved edges often produce a mesh with significant edge deviation. The effect is more
pronounced if the geometry has large curvature changes within a single spline (Figure 1). The reason
being all elements have straight edges. Therefore, one can only approximate a curve. More the number
of edges better is the curve conformity.

Figure 1: Edge Deviation

HyperMesh provides ways of tackling such problems. One can control the way elements are
formed along surface edges and reduce edge deviation by a great extent. This is achieved from
the edge deviation sub-panel within the automesh panel (keyboard shortcut F12).

The Automesh Panel

The parameters controlling edge deviation are:

Min elem size : HyperMesh would not create a smaller element
Max elem size: HyperMesh would not create a larger element
Max deviation : Specify the allowable deviation between the element and
surface edge. HyperMesh would drop nodes and add elements to satisfy the
specified condition if not already so.

Max angle: Specify the maximum allowable angle between two adjacent elements.
HyperMesh would drop nodes and add elements to satisfy the specified
condition if not already so.
A complex surface often results in poor faceting of the surface. In such cases, projection of nodes
is not proper and a poor quality mesh is obtained. For such surfaces, the edges are not captured
very efficiently (Figure 2).

Figure2: Poor Edge Capture

To counter this, HyperMesh allows creation of points on that edge resulting in a very close
approximation of the edge (Figure 3). To create points, go to Geom>point edit>add select on
edge and enter desired number of points to be created. More the number of points better is the
curve captured.

Figure3: Curve captured by adding points on edge

In some cases, a good geometric visualization may not be obtained, although the mesh
generation conforms to the actual geometry. This may result owing to complex surface features.
In such cases, one can use the command *shadingquality(N)
N can be any value between 1 and 10. Increasing N provides better visualization of the geometry.
The effect is shown below in Figures 4 and 5. Although the element size and density are the
same, one can distinctly see the difference in visualization.

Figure4: Low Shading Quality index

Figure5: Higher Shading Quality index

To use/alter this command:

1. Shut down all running sessions of HyperMesh
2. Locate the hm.cfg file located in the installation directory.
3. Open hm.cfg with write permissions in a text editor
4. Locate the command *shadingquality(). The default setting is *shadingquality(5)
5. Change the value within braces to a desired value and save the file with read-only
attribute.
NOTE: All sessions of HyperMesh must be shut down and started again before changes take
effect.