Unit 2

Meshing Techniques
Discretization:
The process of dividing the body into an equivalent number of finite elements
associated with nodes is called as discretization of a structure in finite element
analysis. Each element is associated with the actual physical behaviour of the
body. The total number of elements involved and their size variation within a
given body are matters of engineering judgement. The size of the element should
be optimal. The smallest element discretized should produce useful result and
avoid computational effort.
The body is divided into smaller elements if the results vary rapidly and into
larger elements if the results are constant. Each element consists of nodes
depending on the order of the element chosen.
The discretization of the body is done by using the mesh generation programs.

Types of Elements
Importance of Element Quality
 The shape of Elements in FE Analysis must be distorted from their Ideal shapes
when meshing the irregular or complex geometric shapes.
 Every element is designed to work properly within a certain range of shape
distortion. Exactly how much distortion and what type of distortion is allowed before
an element degenerate depends on factors such as element type, numerical
procedures used in the element design, and so forth.
 The Ideal shape of [2D Elements] a triangular element is an equilateral triangle and
a quadrilateral; it is a square.
 The Ideal shape of [3D Elements] a Tetrahedron element is a Regular or Isosceles
Tetrahedron and a Hexahedron, it is a Cube etc.,
 If the actual shape that the element assumes after mapping onto model geometry
differs too much from the natural shape, the element becomes degenerated and
produces erroneous results.

"Result Quality α Element Quality"

 The major types of degeneration are Aspect Ratio, Skewness, Jacobian Ratio,
Warping Factor, Maximum Corner Angle, Orthogonal Quality, Parallel Deviation,
Taper, Curvature distortion and mid-size node position.
 Generally, large angles between edges (close to 180 degree) are more degenerating
than small angles (close to 0 degree).
 Each FE mesh should be run through an element quality check, and degenerated
elements should be eliminated.
 In order to get reasonably accurate results, it is always important to generate a
structured mesh with good quality parameters.
 If Elements are Degenerated, they will become too stiff and underestimate the
deformations (Field Variables) and its derivatives like strain & stress values become
erroneous.
 Degenerated Elements increase the inaccuracy of the finite element representation
and have a detrimental effect on convergence of Finite Element Solutions.
 Now a days most of the FE Simulation softwares are equipped with In-Built Quality
Check Options and Quality Based Mesh Generation Algorithms.
 Maintaining element quality is always a challenge for analyst during mesh
convergence studies. Though element size is minimized it is of no use if they are
violating quality requirements.
 So, it is important to know how to calculate these parameters for different Element
Shapes. All Element distortions are measured against Ideal shapes.
 In the subsequent articles we are going to discuss about all the Quality Parameters
and their Calculation. Initially Calculation of Quality Parameters for 2D elements
are discussed later it will be extended to 3D elements also with the help of 2D
calculations.
 Click on the following buttons to get the detailed information of each Quality
Parameter.

Mesh Quality Parameters in Finite Element Analysis

Aspect Ratio
 The ratio between largest and smallest characteristic dimension of an element
is known as the Aspect Ratio.
 Large aspect ratios increase the inaccuracy of the finite element representation
and have a detrimental effect on convergence of Finite Element Solutions.
 An aspect ratio of 1 is ideal but cannot always be maintained. In general the
aspect ratios are maintained in between 1 to 5 at critical areas in a domain
where derivatives of field variable are significant.
 Along with solution accuracy the poor element shapes will often cause
convergence problems in nonlinear analyses.
 Aspect ratio is one of the other mesh quality parameters like Skewness,
Warping, Parallel deviation, Maximum corner angle, Jacobian and Orthogonal
Quality.
 Maintaining element quality is always a challenge for analyst during mesh
convergence studies. Though element size is minimized it is of no use if they
are violating quality requirements.
 So, it is important to know how to calculate these parameters for different
Element Shapes.
 This Presentation deals with how to calculate Aspect ratio for 2D elements.
Example Mesh with Aspect Ratios (A.R):
Quad elements with Aspect Ratio: 1

Quad elements with Aspect Ratio: 2

Ideal Shapes for Triangular and Quadrilateral Elements

Skewness:
 Skewness is the Angular Measure of Element quality with respect to the
Angles of Ideal Element Types.
 It is one of the Primary Qualities Measures of FE Mesh. Skewness determines
how close to ideal (i.e., equilateral or equi-angular) a face or cell is.
 There are two different methods for calculating Skewness for 2D elements.
Method-1: Calculation of Skewness for Triangular/Quadrilateral Elements
(Angular Measure)
Triangular Element:
Draw a line from each node to mid-point of its opposite side, draw another line
joining mid-points of other two sides measure the angles between two lines.
Repeat the step for all the three nodes and find all six angles (Θ1 to Θ6).
Skewness is calculated by subtracting Minimum angle from 90 degree.

Quadrilateral Elements:
Draw the lines joining the mid points of opposite sides and Measure the Angle
between these two lines (Θ1 & Θ2).
Skewness is calculated by Subtracting the Minimum angles of Θ1 & Θ2 from 90
degrees.
Note: The acceptable Range of skewness is " 0 ̊ to 45 ̊ " beyond which results
may to be close to the actual solution.

Method-2: Calculation of Skewness for Triangular/Quadrilateral Elements

(Normalized angle deviation)
In the normalized angle deviation method, skewness is defined (in general) as
"maximum of ratio of Angular deviation from Ideal element.

θmax = Largest Angle in the face or cell

θmin = Smallest Angle in the face or cell
θe = Angle for an equi-angular face or cell
where, θe = 60 ̊ for Equilateral Triangle and 90 ̊ for Square

Skewness for Quad= max(0.61,0.51)= 0.61

Note: The acceptable Range of skewness is "0 to 0.5" beyond which results
may to be close to the actual solution.
Warping of an Element:
Ideally all the nodes of quadrilateral element should lie on the same plane but at
curvatures and complicated geometry profiles it is not possible. "Measure of out
of planeness of a Quadrilateral is Warping Factor or Warping Angle".
Warping calculation for triangular elements is not applicable, since three points
define a plane, this check only applies to quads.
Warping Angle:
It is defined as angle between normals of two (triangular) planes formed by
splitting the quad element along diagonals.
Maximum Angle out of the two possibilities is reported as "Warp Angle".
In the case of solid elements, an element's face deviates from being planar. The
quad is divided into two trias along its diagonal, and the angle between the trias
normal is measured.
Ideal Value = 0° (Acceptable < 5° to 10°)
Assume a Quad element is formed with Nodes:1,2,3 &4
Split the Quad using the two diagonals (1,3 & 2,4) into triangles as shown below.

Plane-1 is formed from nodes: 1,2 &4 and Plane-2 is formed from nodes: 2,3 &4
Calculate normals to Plane-1 & Plane-2 as “n1 & n2”. Find the Angle between
n1 & n2 and mark it as Θ1.
Similarly, for Plane-3 & Plane-4 find the angle between normal n3 & n4 and mark
it as Θ2.
Maximum of the two Angles Θ1 & Θ2 is Reported as "Warping Angle".
Warping Factor:
Some of the Finite Element Softwares calls the Out of Planeness of an element as
Warping Factor instead of Warping Angle.
Ideal value of Warping Factor= 0 (Acceptable: 0 to 1)

Jacobian
Ideal value = 1.0 (Acceptable > 0.6)
In simple terms, the Jacobian is a scale factor arising because of the
transformation of the coordinate system. Elements are transformed from the
global coordinates to local coordinates (defined at the centroid of every element),
for faster analysis times.

Distortion
Ideal value = 1.0 (Acceptable > 0.6)
Distortion is defined as - | Jacobian | * AreaLCS / AreaGCS
LCS – Local Coordinate system
GCS – Global Coordinate system

Stretch
Ideal value: 1.0 (Acceptable > 0.2)
For quadrilateral elements stretch = Lmin × √2 / dmax

Stretch for triangular element = R × √12 / Lmax

Included Angles
Skew is based on the overall shape of the element and it does not take into account
the individual angles of a quadrilateral or triangular element. Included or interior
angle check is applied for individual angles.
Quad Ideal value = 900 (acceptable = 450 < θ <1350)
Tria: Ideal value = 600 (acceptable = 200 < θ < 1200)

Taper
Ideal value = 0 (acceptable < 0.5)

Minimum Element Length

This is a very important check for crash analysis (time step calculations). It is also
applied in general to check for the minimum feature length captured and the
presence of any zero-length element.

Chord Deviation
This helps in determining how well curvatures have been modeled. It is defined
as the distance between the mid node of an element edge to the curved surface. It
is only applicable for linear elements.

Tetra Collapse
Ideal Value = 1.0 (Acceptable > 0.1) Tetra collapse = (min of h /√A) / 1.24
(The height of the tetra element is measured from each of the four nodes to its
opposite face, and then divided by the square root of the face’s area, the minimum
of the four resulting values (one per node) is then normalized by dividing it by
1.24.)

How to Improve the Quality of Poor Elements?

1) Manual adjustment: This is done by translating the nodes manually or
remeshing in the poor mesh region. This method consumes lot of time and was
the only technique available for years.
2) Drag node: The user has to drag the nodes of the failing elements. It works
faster and the advantage is that it instantaneously shows the effect of dragging the
node on all the attached elements.
3) Auto quality improvement programs: This is the latest option for quality
improvement. The user has to submit the mesh for quality improvement and a
software program runs in the background to improve the elements quality
automatically. There is a word of caution for the use of auto mesh improvement
programs. For warpage improvement of 2D meshing and Jacobian/distortion
improvement of 10 noded tetra meshes, sometimes the software moves the nodes
off of the geometry by a considerable amount. This could cause visible kinks and
distortion of the geometry.
Apart from the above standard checks, the mesh model should also be subjected
to following the additional checks.
1) Element Free Edges- For a real-life FE model, free edges should match with
the geometry outer edges / free edges. Any additional free edges are an
indication of unconnected nodes.
2) Duplicate Element- Mistakes during operations like reflect or translate can
result in duplicate elements. These duplicate elements do not cause any error
during the analysis but increase the stiffness of the model and results in
smaller displacements and stresses.
3) Duplicate Node- Operations like copy, translate, orient, or reflect can result
in duplicate nodes at a common edge.
4) Shell Normal- The shell element normal helps us in viewing the top or bottom
side stresses which is happened due to an inconsistent shell normal. The FEA
software provides special commands for consistent shell normals (all shell
normals aligned in one direction).
5) Geometry Deviation- After the completion of meshing the geometry, the
mesh and the geometry should be viewed together (mesh line option off). The
mesh should not deviate from the geometry.
6) Delete Free / Temporary Nodes- Free nodes, if not deleted, result in rigid
body motion.
7) Renumber Nodes, Elements, Properties Etc Before Export Operation- Some
software refuses to read the file if the node/element IDs are greater than a
specific limit. This could be avoided by renumbering the nodes, elements etc.
8) Observe Type, Family and Number of Elements (Element Summary for
Complete Model)- The mesh should be checked carefully prior to the export
operation, as well as after importing it in the external solver for element type,
family, numbers, etc.
9) Check Mass (actual mass vs FE model mass)- When a prototype or physical
model of the component is available, the FE model mass should be compared
with the actual mass. A difference means that there are missing or additional
components, or improper material or physical properties.
10) Free-Free Run or Dummy Linear Static Analysis- In the case of a single
component meshing job, a linear static analysis with dummy boundary
conditions should be carried out.
Mesh Refinement:
Mesh refinement is an important tool for editing finite element meshes in order to
increase the accuracy of the solution. Refinement is performed in an iterative procedure
in which a solution is found, error estimates are calculated, and elements in regions of
high error are refined. This process is repeated until the desired accuracy is obtained.

Two types method are used to demonstrate the mesh refinement or numerical
convergence of the solution: