TGrid
TGrid
Introduction to TGrid
1.1
Introduction
TGrid is a highly efficient, easy-to-use, unstructured grid generation program that can
handle grids of virtually unlimited size and complexity, consisting of triangular, tetrahedral, hexahedral, prismatic, or pyramidal cells.
Unstructured grid generation techniques couple basic geometric building blocks with
extensive geometric data to highly automate the grid generation process. In addition,
the generalized data structures used in these schemes permit the addition and removal
of cells to maximize accuracy and minimize memory and CPU requirements.
For input TGrid requires a discretized boundary mesh consisting of either nodes and
edges in 2D, or nodes and triangular/quadrilateral faces in 3D. TGrid contains a number
of tools for checking and repairing the boundary mesh to ensure a good starting point
for the mesh. A complete mesh can be generated from the boundary mesh automatically
or by exercising control of the process.
The user interface to TGrid is written in the Scheme language, which is a dialect of
LISP. Most features are accessible through the graphical interface or the interactive
menu interface. The advanced user can customize and enhance the interface by adding
or changing the Scheme functions.
Introduction to TGrid
1.2
Program Structure
TGrid is part of the FLUENT package, which includes the following products:
FLUENT, the solver.
GAMBIT, the preprocessor for geometry modeling and mesh generation.
TGrid, the additional preprocessor that can generate volume meshes from existing
boundary meshes.
Filters (translators) for import of surface and volume meshes from CAD/CAE
packages such as ANSYS, I-deas, NASTRAN, PATRAN, and others.
Figure 1.2.1 shows how TGrid relates to these products.
GAMBIT
Geometry / Mesh
Geometry set up
2D / 3D Mesh Generation
Boundary Mesh
TGrid
2D triangular mesh
Faceted geometry
Boundary and / or
Volume Mesh
Mesh
You can use TGrid to generate a triangular, tetrahedral, hexcore, or hybrid volume mesh
from an existing boundary mesh.
To create a mesh in TGrid, first use a preprocessor (GAMBIT or a third-party CAD package) to create a boundary mesh in which the boundaries are defined by line segments
(2D) or triangular or quadrilateral facets (3D). To create tetrahedral, prismatic, or pyramidal cells, read the boundary mesh (and any hexahedral cells) into TGrid and continue
the mesh generation process there.
The first step in producing an unstructured grid is to define the shape of the domain
boundaries.
Surface grids created in CAD/CAE packages can be read into TGrid using the appropriate
menu item in the File/Import pull-down submenu (or the associated text commands), or
converted using the appropriate stand-alone grid filter.
When the grid generation is completed, you can read the 3D grid created by TGrid into
the solver. After a grid is read into the solver, the remaining operations are performed
there. These include setting boundary conditions, defining fluid properties, executing the
solution, and viewing and postprocessing the results.
1.3
Program Capabilities
TGrid is a robust and a highly automated unstructured volume mesh generator with the
following meshing capabilities:
Generates triangles (tris) and quadrilaterals (quads) in 2D.
Generates tets, hexcore, prisms, pyramids in 2D.
Generates volume mesh that is accepted by FLUENT.
Uses Delaunay triangulation method for tris/tets.
Uses advancing layer method for prisms.
Generates hexcore mesh.
Has a robust boundary wrapper tool.
Can export polyhedral cells.
Has tools for checking, repairing, and improving boundary mesh to ensure a good
starting point for the mesh.
Is capable of manipulating face/cell zones.
Is flexibleit allows the most appropriate cell type to be used to generate the
volume mesh:
Introduction to TGrid
1.4