Structured Meshes

2D Structured Meshes

•	You can create a structured triangular mesh by using the Convert operation to introduce a diagonal edge to quadrilateral elements.

•	Also see 2D and 3D Boundary Layer Meshes below.

•	Mapped meshing generates a structured mesh with quadrilateral elements.

Compared to an unstructured mesh, the interior mesh vertices in a structured mesh are adjacent to the same number of elements. If you want to use mapped meshing on a geometry, you must build the geometry so that the domains are reasonably “regular” in shape and do not contain holes.

3D Structured Meshes

•	Swept meshing generates a structured mesh (at least in the direction of the sweep) with prism or hexahedral elements. See About Swept Meshes.

•	Boundary Layers meshing generates structured layers of elements along specific boundaries integrating into an existing structured or unstructured mesh.

2D and 3D Boundary Layer Meshes

The meshing type Boundary Layers is an example of a structured mesh. A boundary layer mesh is a mesh with dense element distribution in the normal direction along specific boundaries. This type of mesh is typically used for fluid flow problems in order to resolve the thin boundary layers along the no-slip boundaries.

•	In 2D, a layered quadrilateral mesh is used along the specified no-slip boundaries.

•	In 3D, the boundary layer mesh is a layered prism mesh or a hexahedral mesh, depending on whether the corresponding boundary-layer boundaries contain a triangular or quadrilateral mesh.

Boundary layer meshes can also resolve large temperature gradients close to heated surfaces subjected to sudden changes over time.

If you have the CFD Module or the Heat Transfer Module, Heat Sink shows the introduction of a boundary layer mesh at the surfaces of the inner half-circle arc.