Creating a 3D mesh structural model and meshing surfaces
- Input surfaces must be watertight. It is therefore recommended to use a 3D structural model that was generated with the option 'Create watertight surfaces' as input, rather than surfaces in a surface set. See Background to watertight surfaces.
- For geomechanical simulation it is recommended that the geomechanical model and 3D mesh (both inputs to the geomechanical simulation) have the same underlying data, preferably the same (watertight) structural model. The application will notify you (with a warning message) when differences between both models are detected in terms of names/number of surfaces/zones (you can nevertheless proceed).
The Surface Meshing workflow on the 3D Mesh strip (model > 3D Mesh) allows you to create a 3D mesh structural model and assign surfaces as input for this model (surfaces can be assigned from a 3D structural model created in JewelSuite Subsurface Modeling or from a surface set). You then specify an area around the surfaces to create the enclosed volume needed for the finite-element analysis.
Most probably the tri-meshes in your 3D structural model (or surface set) were not specifically intended to be used for generating volume meshes for finite analysis, and generally contain triangles that do not produce good results when used directly. With the workflow, you re-triangulate these surfaces to make them suitable as input for volume meshing.
Prior to this, to keep the element count and computation time down, you can set element sizes to define areas of the model where you want a higher density of elements (around a well, for example) while reducing element count in areas of less interest. During the Mesh Surfaces step, all surfaces in your model are re-triangulated according to these settings.
When you have re-triangulated the surfaces, you can use these as input to create a tetrahedral volume mesh suitable for use in finite-element analysis. You do this in the 3D Meshing workflow. After the volume meshing, you can turn the mesh into a second order one by adding nodes, and also allow discontinuities in properties in the Mesh Options step.
Finally, if you are using Abaqus, you can use your volume mesh in the Create Abaqus case step, which you can use in turn directly by Abaqus for your geomechanical simulation.