6.3.4 PreBFC Mesh Files

You can use PreBFC to create two different types of meshes for ANSYS FLUENT, structured quadrilateral/hexahedral and unstructured triangular/tetrahedral.

Structured Mesh Files

To generate a structured 2D or 3D mesh, follow the procedure described in the PreBFC User's Guide (Chapters 6 and 7). The resulting mesh will contain quadrilateral (2D) or hexahedral (3D) elements. Do not specify more than 70 wall zones and 35 inlet zones.

To import the mesh, use the File/Import/PreBFC File... menu item, as described in Section  4.12.19.

To manually convert a file in PreBFC format to a mesh file suitable for ANSYS FLUENT, enter the following command:

utility fl42seg input_filename output_filename

The output file produced can be read into ANSYS FLUENT using the File/Read/Mesh... menu item, as described in Section  4.2.

Unstructured Triangular and Tetrahedral Mesh Files

To generate an unstructured 2D mesh, follow the procedure described in the PreBFC User's Guide. Save the mesh file in the RAMPANT format using the MESH-RAMPANT/TGRID command. The current ANSYS FLUENT format is the same as the RAMPANT format. The resulting mesh will contain triangular elements. To import the mesh, use the File/Read/Mesh... menu item, as described in Section  4.2.

To generate a 3D unstructured tetrahedral mesh, follow the procedure described in Chapter 8 of the PreBFC User's Guide for generating a surface mesh. Then read the surface mesh into TGrid, and complete the mesh generation there. See Section  6.3.3 for information about TGrid mesh files.