Most people struggle to generate layers predictably with snappyHexMesh.

So much so, they leave it for another, often commercial alternative.

Always start with a refined mesh near the walls, SHM did a good job with the distance refinement for the defined wall regions

But I haven’t given up on it.

You see, over the years I’ve been coming back to it, mostly because I like tinkering with tools. I always have!

I usually get a good mesh out of it, but lately I’ve been pushing it to its limits (and my 32GB machine memory!)

I’ve only generated 3 layers here, but this setup proved that cell refinement makes a significant difference to layer growth

Next, I wanted to test further corner refinement, trying to get as close as possible to the corners.

Now, this was an interesting revelation…

Left to right, snapped to layered…

The same 5 layers requested and generated but compressed in a smaller space, given the smaller cells.

SHM will scale the whole layer stack.

But, the transition cells / layers is quite abrupt here, so a stepped refinement would help.

I plan to continue my practical experiments, develop my SHM insight tool and write here and on LinkedIn about them, so do subscribe and follow.

Hope you’ve learnt something.

Have a great week!
Nasser

P.S. If you’re starting out with OpenFOAM take a look at The OpenFOAM Diet manual I made from scratch for you. It’s a no frills, no fluff guide to simulating with OpenFOAM (and previous buyers have raved about it!).
Click here to learn more and start reading it

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