ANSYS ICEM CFD has its roots in the late 1980's. It is now generally acknowledged to be the best CFD pre and post processor. Strengths include: robust and fast hexahedral meshing, tetrahedral meshing and surface meshing; versatile boundary layer meshing; generation of very large meshes (10 million elements on a PC, 60+ million elements on a unix workstation).
2004 saw the first full release of the of the FEA variant AI*Environment, including the option for batch surface meshing of body-in-white automotive assemblies with weld modelling.
The products options include automated all-hexahedral meshing of arbitrary volumes, generation of NURBS surface geometry from point-cloud, surface mesh or STL files.
ANSYS ICEM CFD provides translators to over 100 flow solvers and structural analysis codes, as well as standard formats, including ANSYS CFX, STAR-CD, FLUENT, ANSYS, NASTRAN, ABAQUS, LS-Dyna, PATRAN and RADIOSS. Direct CAD Interfaces link the parametric geometry creation tools available in CADDS5, CATIA, ICEM Surf, Pro/ENGINEER, SDRC I-DEAS, SolidWorks, Solid Edge and Unigraphics to the grid generation, post-processing, and grid optimization tools of ANSYS ICEM CFD. ANSYS work closely with these CAD/CAM vendors to ensure that the Direct CAD Interfaces remain current.
Structured Hexahedral Mesher:
ANSYS ICEM CFD Hexa uses a new approach in hexahedral grid generation where many of the interactive operations most performed by experts are automated. As a result, ICEM CFD Hexa allows you to generate high quality hexahedral grids in a fraction of the time that is traditionally required.
How does it work?
The user brings the CAD surfaces or STL data that describes the space to be meshed into ANSYS ICEM CFD Hexa. Hexa then automatically generates a global block around the CAD. By subdividing this block into smaller blocks and assigning different materials the user can `cut' out the desired shape. To reflect the characteristic features of the geometry to be meshed, the block structure can be interactively adjusted to the underlying CAD geometry. ANSYS ICEM CFD Hexa is the hexahedral mesher chosen by IBM for Catia v5.
PATCHANIM:The surface mesh generated in ANSYS ICEM CFD Hexa does not have to align to the boundaries of the underlying CAD surface. This means that your surface model can be defined by small sliver surfaces and you don't have to repair this prior to meshing.
OGRIDANIM:The automatic O-Mesh option in ANSYS ICEM CFD Hexa is one the most powerful features. The user only has to build the H-Mesh topology and the O-Mesh topology is added automatically. In some cases compared to traditional multi-block meshers this functionality can save days!
SMOOTHANIM:The mesh generated from ANSYS ICEM CFD Hexa can be smoothed to optimize surface orthogonality and inter-cell spacing. The user can select various schemes depending on the required result.
GLIDER:The flow around a glider is meshed in ANSYS ICEM CFD Hexa.
X33HEXAGRID
X33 Launch Vehicle - Multi-Block Structured Grid. Surface grid and symmetry plane shown. 541,168 cells
X33 Launch Vehicle - Multi-Block Structured Grid Topology features O-Grids around the Vertical Tail and Fin. 28 Blocks Total.
HEXA_B2:
Hexahedral Volume Mesh for Climate Control Model - CFD Model of Interior Cabin. 1.7 million HEX cells.
Diagram courtesy of Daimler-Benz AG
To find out more about ANSYS ICEM CFD and ANSYS AI*Environment, please visit www.ansys.com/products/icemcfd.asp
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