Mesh Size Input Data Format

The format of the local mesh size control which is part of model description has been explained in Section Model Input Data Format.

The adaptive mesh size control is based on a background mesh. The required mesh size is specified at nodes of this mesh and is interpolated over the individual elements of the background mesh. The following elements can form the background mesh

• linear edge (2 nodes),
• linear triangle (3 nodes) and
• linear tetrahedron (4 nodes).

If quadratic elements are used, the midside nodes are ignored. The background mesh is generally independent of the model being discretized but it can be (more likely) tightly connected to it. It is usually identical with the mesh generated during the previous step of an adaptive analysis. The adaptive mesh size input data file is provided by the application analysis code but its manual creation (as an startup mesh size control) is also possible. The description of the background mesh input data format is provided in the following section.