Creating a Hexahedral Mesh for 3D Bolt Models
Creating a hexahedral mesh for use with pretensioned 3D bolts assures that a suitable cutting plane surface will be available to create a 3D bolt pretension property. The following is the recommended procedure to mesh 3D bolts. Other procedures may or may not produce acceptable results.
Enter the Advanced Meshing workbench.
Select the Advanced Surface Mesher
tool.Select the bolt geometry.
In the Global Parameters dialog box, choose the frontal quadrangle method with linear elements, and select Quads only in the Mesh tabbed page.
Use the Boundary Simplification
tool to ignore all faces of the bolt except the bottom circular face—the face that represents the threaded end of the bolt farthest from the bolt head.Mesh the part.
CATIA V5 creates a mesh, Advanced Surface Mesh.1, on the bottom circular face of the bolt.
Select the Extrude Mesher with Translation
tool.In the dialog box that appears, do the following:
Select Advanced Surface Mesh.1 as the mesh part.
For the Transformation Axis, select the central axis through the bolt.
Select the Start (0mm, the same circular face used in Step 4) and End (adjacent to the bottom of the bolt head) points on the axis.
Select Uniform for the distribution type, and set the desired number of mesh layers along the axis.
Click OK.
CATIA V5 creates a mesh, Extrusion Mesh With Translation.1, along the length of the bolt.
Select the Translation Mesher
.In the dialog box that appears, do the following:
Select Advanced Surface Mesh.1 as the mesh part.
For the Translation Direction, select the central axis through the bolt.
For the Distance, select the same distance used for the End point in Step 6.
Select Condensation with all meshes for the capture.
Use the Mesh Part Selector
to select Extrusion Mesh With Translation.1.Select Initialize to set the tolerance.
Click OK.
CATIA V5 creates a mesh, Translation Mesh.1, on the bottom surface of the bolt head to match the surface mesh used on the bottom face of the bolt.
Select the Advanced Surface Mesher
tool.Select the bolt geometry.
In the Global Parameters dialog box, choose the frontal quadrangle method with linear elements, and select Quads only in the Mesh tabbed page. Use Automatic Mesh Capture, and in the Mesh Part Selector choose the translation mesh created in Step 7.
Use the Boundary Simplification
tool to ignore all faces of the bolt except the bottom circular face of the bolt head.Mesh the part.
CATIA V5 creates a mesh, Advanced Surface Mesh.2, on the bottom circular face of the bolt head, matching and expanding the existing translation mesh.
Select the Extrude Mesher with Translation
tool.In the dialog box that appears, do the following:
Select Advanced Surface Mesh.2 and Translation Mesh.1 as the mesh parts.
For the Transformation Axis, select the central axis through the bolt.
Select the Start (0mm, the same circular face used in Step 10) and End (adjacent to the top of the bolt head) points on the axis.
Select Uniform for the distribution type, and set the desired number of mesh layers through the bolt head.
Select Condensation for the capture.
Use the Mesh Part Selector
to select Extrusion Mesh With Translation.1 (created in Step 6).Select Initialize to set the tolerance.
Click OK to create the extruded mesh.
Deactivate Advanced Surface Mesh.1, Translation Mesh.1, and Advanced Surface Mesh.2 in the specification tree.
These interim meshes are no longer needed since the mesh for the entire bolt is now complete.
Verify that there are no duplicate nodes in the mesh. See Analyzing Element Quality in the CATIA V5 Advanced Meshing Tools User's Guide for more information on checking meshes in CATIA.