Mesh Scaling for Affordable Solution Verification

Abstract

Solution verification is the process of verifying the solution of a finite element analysis by performing a series of analyses on meshes of increasing mesh densities, to determine if the solution is converging. Solution verification has historically been too expensive, relying upon refinement templates resulting in an 8X multiplier in the number of elements. For even simple convergence studies, the 8X and 64X meshes must be solved, quickly exhausting computational resources. In this paper, we introduce Mesh Scaling, a new global mesh refinement technique for building series of all-hexahedral meshes for solution verification, without the 8X multiplier. Mesh Scaling reverse engineers the block decomposition of existing all-hexahedral meshes followed by remeshing the block decomposition using the original mesh as the sizing function multiplied by any positive floating number (e.g. 0.5X, 2X, 4X, 6X, etc.), enabling larger series of meshes to be constructed with fewer elements, making solution verification tractable.