Step 2: General Settings

General

1.   Check the mesh.

General Check

   ANSYS FLUENT will perform various checks on the mesh and will report the progress in the console. Make sure that the reported minimum volume is a positive number.

2.   Smooth and swap the mesh.

Mesh $\rightarrow$ Smooth/Swap...

  The smooth and swap function is available only in serial ANSYS FLUENT. If you want to solve using ANSYS FLUENT parallel, you can do so only after node smoothing and face swapping. Node smoothing and face swapping will improve the mesh quality. This step is recommended for triangular and tetrahedral meshes.

(a)   Retain the default smoothing parameters and click Smooth.

(b)   Click Swap repeatedly until the Number Swapped in the Swap Info group box is zero.

(c)   Close the Smooth/Swap Mesh dialog box.

3.   Check the mesh.

General Check

Note:   It is a good practice to check the mesh after you manipulate it (i.e., scale, convert to polyhedra, merge, separate, fuse, add zones, or smooth and swap.) This will ensure that the quality of the mesh has not been compromised.

4.   Examine the mesh (Figure  10.2).

  The mesh consists of three fluid zones, fluid-13, fluid-14, and fluid-18. These are reported in the console when the mesh is read. In the Mesh Display dialog box, the fluid zones are reported as interior zones interior-61, interior-62 and interior-66. In a later step, you will learn how to associate a fluid zone with an interior zone. The fluid zone containing the blades will be solved in a rotational reference frame.

Figure 10.2: Mesh of the 2D Centrifugal Blower

  The fluid zones are separated by wall boundaries. These boundaries were used in the mesh generator to separate the fluid zones, and will be converted to interior zones when the boundary conditions are set later in this tutorial. Each of these wall zones also has an associated "shadow wall'' which was created by ANSYS FLUENT when it read the mesh. Shadow walls are created whenever a wall has fluid zones on both sides.

5.   Retain the default solver settings.

General