Anisotropic hex mesh refinement

Coreform Cubit Meshing
1

Dear Cubit community,

I am using Coreform-Cubit 2025.8 on Windows. I have three bricks in my geometry, and one of them (the middle one) is very thin. I want to refine two parts of my mesh, but the issue is that the refinement density in the z direction is much higher than in the x and y directions. Is there any way to make the refinement pattern anisotropic? I want to have a higher density of refinement in the x and y directions because in the z direction I already have a high density of nodes. My mesh (after the refinement) looks like this:

image
image1355×749 40.6 KB

And here is the script to reproduce the mesh:

#!cubit
reset
brick x 3000 y 3000 z 500
move Volume 1 z -750 include_merged
webcut volume 1 with plane zplane offset -800
webcut volume 2 with plane zplane offset -820

imprint vol all
merge vol all
volume all size auto factor 5
mesh vol all
refine hex 990 969 numsplit 2 bias 1.0 depth 1

mesh vertex all

I very much appreciate any help.

Cheers

Ali

2

Hey @ali_geo,

I wonder if an approach here could be to first mesh the surface, refine that, and then sweep it in the depth direction. Here’s an example of what I mean:

#!cubit
reset
brick x 3000 y 3000 z 500
move Volume 1 z -750 include_merged
webcut volume 1 with plane zplane offset -800
webcut volume 2 with plane zplane offset -820

imprint vol all
merge vol all

# Mesh the top surface
surface 1 size 135
surface 1 scheme map
mesh surface 1

# Refine it in the corners
refine face 1 463  numsplit 2 bias 1.0 depth 1 smooth

# Sweep in the depth direction
volume all size 135
volume all redistribute nodes on 
volume all scheme Sweep Vector 0 0 -1 sweep transform translate propagate bias  
volume all autosmooth target off 
mesh volume 1
mesh volume 2
mesh volume 3

Here’s the resulting hex mesh:

image
image1870×1234 192 KB

Cheers,
Pat

1 Like
3

The approach from @pmarty would be the easiest.

Another one would be to insert new columns, but that’s way more troublesome.

#!cubit
reset
brick x 3000 y 3000 z 500
move Volume 1 z -750 include_merged
webcut volume 1 with plane zplane offset -800
webcut volume 2 with plane zplane offset -820

imprint vol all
merge vol all
volume all size auto factor 5
mesh vol all
column open node 685  684 686

image
image1159×809 15.4 KB

1 Like
4

Thanks @pmarty for your help. I tried it, and the refined mesh looks more homogeneous now.

5

@Norbert_Hofbauer Sorry, I did not get your solution. How does the column allow me to refine the hex mesh?

6

This inserts a new collumn of hexes into the mesh. It’s more or less a refinement in x and y without z direction. But definitely not so handy as using the surface refinement approach.

image
image932×553 8.86 KB

#!cubit
reset
brick x 3000 y 3000 z 500
move Volume 1 z -750 include_merged
webcut volume 1 with plane zplane offset -800
webcut volume 2 with plane zplane offset -820

imprint vol all
merge vol all
volume all size auto factor 5
mesh vol all
column open node 662  620 661 
column open node 663  662 664 
column open node 684  685 661 
column open node 686  685 687 
column open node 665  664 666
1 Like
7

Thanks a lot @Norbert_Hofbauer , I will try it.