Introduction to TGrid
TGrid is unstructured grid generation program to create unstructured tetrahedral and Hex Core mesh for complex and very large surface mesh & capable of handling the grids of tetrahedral, hexahedral, prismatic, or pyramidal cells. TGrid contains a number of tools for checking and repairing the boundary mesh to ensure a good quality mesh. TGrid can import boundary mesh from the ANSYS preprocessor GAMBIT, as well as numerous third party preprocessors.
A complete mesh can be generated from the boundary mesh automatically or by exercising control of the process. TGrid convenient mesh quality diagnostic tools allow for easy verification of mesh size and quality. Most features are accessible through the graphical interface or menu interface. The purpose of this lesson series is to give user the essence of the fundamental concepts of the TGrid and its operational knowledge.
Recommended background
This course is designed for those CFD Engineers, who often face problems in handling the mesh with huge cell count with complexity and also for those who are aspiring for CFD preprocessing knowledge.
Course has no pre-requisites but we assume that you have fundamental knowledge of Fluid mechanics and Mathematics.
If you have any difficulty understanding any explained concept in the course, please raise your query and we would help you.
Your Learning
Our main objective of the course is to introduce you to the subject of TGrid and give necessary start point for you to start the journey of this subject. By the end of this course, you would learn required basic concepts to understand the subject. You will understand the basic concepts and all the operational knowledge of TGrid. Software focused training will be provided to master the techniques of volume mesh generation and mesh quality improvement.
This course will help you in generating a good quality tetrahedral mesh from surface mesh. Meshing operations related to Prism mesh generations are beyond the scope of this course.
This is a free course which contains video lessons. The course is targeted towards understanding the basic features of the TGrid software and progressing towards the tetrahedral meshing procedure. The slope of the learning is maintained linear in order to build a strong software knowledge base.
Course Format
This course contains videos lessons. The length of video varies from 20 minutes to 40 minutes. This video lesson series covers the step by step procedure of generating the tetrahedral mesh from available triangular mesh. Considering the number of concepts covered in each video lesson and required background study that you need to do, it is expected to finish this course in 4 weeks.
Course Syllabus
The course is divided into five lessons. Each lesson has a specific objective and is designed to satisfy the needs of subsequent lesson. It is recommended that you do not move to the next lesson until all the concepts in the lesson are well understood.
Lesson 1: Introduction
At the very beginning, you get an insight about TGrid software. This lesson tells about various software capabilities, due to which, it is considered as unique among other mesh generation tools. Engineers often encounter problems in generating volume mesh for highly complex and huge mesh counts. TGrid is proved to be very effective tool for such volume mesh generation operations.
TGrid uses Delaunay tetrahedral initialization scheme that ensures success on any valid boundary mesh. Theory of Delaunay Triangulation is also introduced here.
Lesson 2: How to Start?
This chapter will give an insight about how to start TGrid software using your Windows operating system or Linux operating system. Those who are first time users of this software will be able to learn about its user interface, different methods of importing the files into software, exporting the files from software, displaying grid and then displaying the mesh quality.
Lesson 3: Playing with surface mesh
Before moving ahead for the volume mesh generation, certain surface mesh criteria should be satisfied. To get good quality volume mesh as an output, good quality surface mesh as an input is required. If surface mesh contains distorted elements, free nodes, gaps & intersecting boundary zones, then with such mesh volume mesh initialization fails.
This chapter will cover all the surface mesh related issues. It will also give the step by step demonstration about how to resolve these issues in TGrid. These steps are important, because the minimum limit for mesh quality criteria should be satisfied in order to maintain minimum quality requirements of the mesh.
Lesson 4: Tetrahedral mesh generation
This lesson describes the procedure to create the tetrahedral mesh in the domain. It also describes some of the common problems faced during tetrahedral meshing. It contains automatic mesh generation, manual mesh generation and a combination of manual and automatic command.
Tetrahedral mesh generation process includes two processes; namely, tetrahedral mesh initialization & tetrahedral mesh refinement, which are also described in this lesson.
Lesson 5: Improving volume mesh
The objective of this lesson is to introduce various parameters that need to be considered while checking and improving the volume mesh quality before exporting it into the solver. It contains the following sections - Mesh check operation, Mesh quality check operation, Tet improve operation, Cell modification & Auto node movement.
1. What are the prerequisites of this course?
Course has no pre-requisites but we assume that you have fundamental knowledge of Fluid mechanics and Mathematics.
This course is designed for those CFD Engineers, who often face problems in handling the mesh with huge cell count with complexity and also for those who are aspiring for CFD preprocessing knowledge.
2. When I can start the course and how much time is needed to complete the course?
The course is available all the time. Time necessary to start the course is what you need to create a LearnCAx login :). Considering difficulty level, understanding capacity and necessary extra reading, on average, we expect this course to be finished in 4 weeks.
3. What are the capabilities of TGrid software?
TGrid software is a specialized preprocessor used to create unstructured tetrahedral and Hex Core mesh for complex and very large surface mesh. TGrid offers advanced prism layer creation tools including collision detection and sharp corner handling. TGrid is also equipped with an advanced wrapping procedure that produces a high-quality, size function driven connected triangular surface mesh from a large set of unconnected faceted surfaces. TGrid software is robust; its automated algorithms save preprocessing time and generate high-quality mesh for CFD analysis.
4. How difficult is this course?
The course is designed for beginners and we believe that it’s easy for everyone.
5. I have generated grids for different zones using Gambit. How do I merge them together using TGrid later?
TGrid have that capability to read multiple mesh files at a time. For a valid conformal mesh, mesh nodes on the faces at the interface of the two parts have to be matching within a tolerance. Then, you can merge the nodes using TGrid. If the mesh on the faces at the interface is non conformal, then these nodes can be merged using surface mesh operations in TGrid.
6. Can I read a surface mesh of very poor quality into TGrid?
Yes, definitely. TGrid is capable of handling the complex and very large surface mesh of any quality. TGrid contains a number of tools for checking and repairing the boundary mesh to ensure a good quality mesh. A complete mesh can be generated from the boundary mesh automatically or by exercising control of the process.
7. Where am I going to apply my knowledge of TGrid in actual industry?
TGrid software is utilized heavily in large-scale automotive and aerospace applications, in which advanced meshing techniques are required for the computational analysis of fluid flow.
In today’s automotive industry, front-end underhood thermal management (UTM) represents one of the most challenging meshing applications. TGrid software addresses this challenge by capturing best practices and automating the time-consuming manual meshing once required for this class of problems. Flexibility and customization allow TGrid meshing tools to be used in a wide range of applications, from external aerodynamics on Formula One (F1) racing cars to droplet distribution inside human nasal cavities.
8. Will I get the software access along with this course?
No. We don’t provide the software access.
9. I have few queries related to work I am doing. Can I contact you?
As the course is designed for beginners, so you might have specific questions. Feel free to ask those questions using the link “Ask a Question” given on course page.