5.

4 Model pre-processing

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be done by hand shifting from external face to internal face whenever it is more convenient
between partitions.
MID.SURF command procedure is as follows: MID.SURF> Skin> Skin options window where
the solid geometry selection is carried out> ok> define the correct boundary lines> ok> surface to
be offseted selection> ok> Skin Offset Value window> ok> Middle surface generated.
One common problem when using the MID.SURF command is that sometimes ANSA
struggles with the geometry thickness boundaries. So selecting and deselecting some lines
(white highlighted ones) during boundaries definition may be needed.

Figure 5.8: Irregular cross interference.

Sixth Step
Now that the middle surface is finished, it is finally possible to start the meshing process
after switching to the mesh module. There are some meshing algorithms available in ANSA
that give a big help during meshing. Although they produce some quite good meshes, there
is always some manual work to do because with this algorithms there is a lot going around
during meshing that the user does not control and the final result rarely is very satisfactory for
this kind of complex geometries. Therefore, manual meshing is indeed needed, even further
with the benefit of the available mesh parameters and mesh quality criteria loaded files. These
two mesh settings files give an extra help to the user in order to achieve the best mesh for the
purpose of crash simulation in the explicit code of PAM-CRASH.
Concerning manual meshing techniques, every user has its own approach to this iterative
process. For the present example, this iterative process is faster and easier because of mesh
settings. One important example where the mesh parameter settings are of significant importance is during mesh generation around structural holes, Figure 5.9. These feature allows the
user to grow elements around the hole within a diameter range that can simulate the bolted
fixed area of the structure. Therefore, the structures boundary conditions can be precisely
defined in the bolted fixed areas. However, if the CAD drawing has not correctly defined
the hole, hole feature cannot recognize it and cannot orientate the mesh around it. In this
scenarios the best solution is to measure the hole diameter, define the center of the hole, fill
the hole and open a new one with the previous center point and diameter mesured. With this