How to locate and view poor quality volume elements in Fluent Meshing?

Use of Display Grid to display elements of poor quality along with surrounding face zones to locate elements in mesh context.

Low Orthogonal Quality polyhedral elements are not recommended for Fluent calculations.  It is recommended to keep the Orthogonal Quality above 0.1.  

 

It is assumed that a volume mesh is generated by Fluent Meshing

If volume element orthogonal quality is less than target value Improve Volume Mesh task can be added.  If quality is still less than target Display Grid tool can be used to display element(s) location.  

 

Step A: Assess the number of poor-quality cells in Cell Zones

Ribbon > Plot > Cell Distribution

1) Set Options to Quality

2) Set Quality Measure... to Orthogonal Quality

3) Set Minimum to 0, set maximum to target value.

4) Select all Cell zones

5) Plot

Assess the number of cells below the quality target.

 

Step B: Display the poor-quality cells

Ribbon > Dispaly > Grid...

Go to Cells Tab.

1) Set Options to Quality

2) Select Orthogonal quality from Quality Measure

3) Enter a Cell Quality Range of 0.0 to 0.1

4) Select all Cell Zones

5) Display

One or more cells will be displayed.  Auto scale and zoom in on a cell, if necessary.  

Change the Node Selection Filter to select nodes (control n), and right-click on a node of the cell.

A node number and coordinate location should appear in the Console.

Step C: Display the poor-quality cells in a neighborhood of face cells

Switch to Bounds tab. 

1) The node number should appear in the Selection field for the Neighborhood (if it does not appear, copy-paste from the Console).

2) Set a reasonable number for Neighborhood  +/- Delta. 

3) Click "Set Ranges"

4) Click Display.

1) Go to Faces Tab.

2) Select all non-interior faces

3) Display

Orient the model display to better understand the location and reason for the poor cell quality.

Fluent User Guide: 6.2. Mesh Requirements and Considerations