Abaqus Mesh Refinement Help

GrMaMo

Hi,

I'm very new to abaqus and am trying to complete a plane stress analysis project for college. I am currently trying to do a mesh refinement at the areas of highest strain but am not sure how to go about it. I partitioned the part (a plain extruded rectangle) and applied a finer mesh to the partitioned areas. The outer corners now have a fine regular mesh however the rest of the part has an irregular mesh. I have no idea if that is ok as it is but i assume I have to try and get the larger middle elements to form a more uniform, square mesh? If so how do I do this? I also can only have 1000 nodes max because I'm using the student edition of abaqus.

CatFromHue

I know in Ansys you can use a mesh bias factor (I think that's what it's called anyway) to space out a mesh so it's finer near the point of interest but then gradually get's bigger as you move away from it.

You could also try partitioning the rectangle further and then making the mesh larger and larger as you move away from the point of interest with each partition.

Or you could ask your lecturer too. Most lecturers are happy to answer questions once a student has done some work themselves. They won't give you the exact details on how to do it but will help you figure it out yourself.

breadmonkey

Ansys has the ability to do what is called an "adaptive analysis" whereby it identifies regions of high stress variation, refines the mesh and resolves the model. You can do this a number of times until you hit the target level of accuracy (user specified %). Maybe have a search through the help index to see if Abaqus has this facility.

If it doesn't then you have you do it manually. Unfortunately (in my experience), the ways in which you can do this vary from program to program. Best to ask your lecturer if that's the case.