Direct modification of semanticaly-enriched finite element meshes

Abstract

Behaviour analysis loop is largely performed on virtual product model before its physical manufacturing. The last avoids high expenses in terms of money and time spent on intermediate manufacturing. It is gainful from the reality to the virtuality but the process could be further optimized especially during the product behaviour optimization phase. This process involves repetition of four main processing steps: CAD design and modification, mesh creation, Finite Element (FE) model generation with the association of physical and geometric data, FE Analysis. The product behaviour analysis loop is performed on the rst design solution as well as on the numerous successive product optimization loops. Each design solution evaluation necessitates the same time as required for the first product design that is particularly crucial in the context of maintenance. In this paper we propose a new framework for CAD-less product optimisation through FE analysis which reduces the model preparation activities traditionally required for FE model creation. More concretely, the idea is to directly operate on the rstly created FE mesh, enriched with physical/geometric semantics, to perform the product modi cations required to achieve its optimised version. In order to accomplish the proposed CAD-less FE analysis framework, modification operators acting on both the mesh geometry and the associated semantics need to be devised. In this paper we discuss the underlying concepts and present possible components for the development of such operators. A high-level operator speci cation is proposed according to a modular structure that allows an easy realisation of di erent mesh modification operators. Here, two instances of this high-level operator are described: the planar cracking and the drilling. The realised prototypes validated on industrial FE models show clearly the feasibility of this approach.