New Swept Meshing feature in Bentley's PLAXIS 3D Featured

With the release of Bentley's PLAXIS 3D CONNECT Edition V20 Update 2, the meshing procedure is enhanced with the new Swept Meshing Feature.

Learn more about PLAXIS CONNECT

Swept meshing refers to the method in which a face of a volume (termed as source face) is meshed and then “swept” along the main volume following its trajectory (termed as sweeping direction), thus creating a volume mesh.

The cross-section of the volume considered should remain constant along the trajectory of the volume, which will allow for the source face to be swept along the sweeping direction.

The benefits of using this mesh method include:

• Faster mesh generation
• More control over mesh density
• Considerable reduction of the size of the mesh compared to default unstructured meshing process

PLAXIS 3D performs an automatic swept mesh detection that consists of two steps: 1. Determining which volumes are suitable for sweeping; and 2. Selecting the compatible set of volumes, considering the possible sweep directions, which will actually be meshed with a structured swept mesh.

The generated mesh in PLAXIS Output program should be always inspected to ensure that it fits the requirements of the calculation.

Swept meshing can be utilized in certain volumes that satisfy the following criteria:

• They contain at least two surfaces with an identical cross-section which are flat and parallel to each other while being connected only by straight edges.
• They do not contain any NURBS (Non-uniform rational basis spline) surfaces.
• There are no extra geometric features or any local mesh refinement variations over the sweeping direction that “break” the symmetry of the swept mesh.

Examples comparing the generated mesh with and without activating the Swept meshing feature can be found in the Image Gallery below.

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