Add_Boundary_Layers_Lesson_1

The Add Boundary Layers task of the water tight geometry workflow allows you to create high resolution
mesh near selected surfaces, which can be used to capture flow property gradients, especially near wall
surfaces, when performing a CFD simulation. [1] [2]
Among the user inputs required in this task are the region and the surface on which the boundary layer
mesh needs to be generated. This is the focus of this lesson.
Let’s get started!
When simulating a fluid flow problem using CFD, high resolution mesh is required at the fluid-solid interface
to capture the complex fluid flow behavior in the boundary layer region. For this, the watertight geometry
workflow has the Add Boundary Layers task using which the required boundary layer mesh can be defined.
The user inputs required to define the boundary layer mesh need to provide information regarding two key
aspects:
1. “How to define the boundary layer mesh”, which includes the type of boundary layer and how it
must grow on the selected surfaces.
2. “Where to apply the boundary layers” which is the focus of this lesson.
To define the locations of boundary layer mesh generation, two user inputs are required.
1. Add In
2. Grow On.

The Add In option specifies the region or a volumetric zone of the CFD model in which you would like to
add the boundary layers.
Once the region has been selected, the Grow On option is used to specify the surfaces on which boundary
layers need to be added, within the selected region.
Through the various options available for these two inputs the watertight workflow provides great flexibility
for the user to specify where boundary layer mesh is added in the computational model.
(2:35) Let us now understand some specific aspects of these inputs through
an example.
Launch Ansys Fluent in meshing mode. Go to Let us now understand some
specific aspects of these inputs through an example. Once Fluent finishes
reading the file, you will notice that the watertight geometry workflow has
been automatically setup and all the tasks till the Update Regions task have
already been successfully completed.
The model we have here is that of a generic ball or check valve, which
consists of 1 solid region i.e., the pipe geometry.
Three fluid regions:
1. The inlet pipe region,
2. The valve region,
3. The outlet pipe region.

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The ball valve is considered as a void in the model.

In this example, we will use the default settings for all the inputs in
the task, except the numbers of layers, which we will set to five and
analyze only the influence of different Add In and Grow On options.
Let us begin with adding boundary layers in all the fluid regions by
selecting the option ‘fluid-regions’ in the ‘Add In’ field.

(4:24) The ‘only walls’ option, which is the default for the ‘Grow on’ input, will add layers on all the wall-
type boundaries in the fluid region. Click Add Boundary Layers to confirm the inputs. Next, go to generate
the volume mesh task and without changing the default options, click on generate the volume mesh button.

(4:47) Once the volume mesh has been generated, we

can turn on the clipping plane and visualize an x-cut of
the model.
Notice: The layers grow from the pipe wall and the ball
valve surface into the fluid region.
When ‘all-zones’ is chosen, boundary layers will grow
on all the boundary surfaces that enclose each fluid
region. As you can see here, along with layers on the
walls, prism elements are generated on the inlet and
outlet surfaces as well as fluid-fluid interfaces.

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Figure 1 All Zones are Selected

(5:45) If it is required to grow layers only on the interface of the solid and fluid regions, then choose ‘solid-
fluid-interface’ option. This will create high resolution mesh only at the solid-fluid interfaces of the fluid
regions and all other type of boundaries in the fluid regions, such as the surfaces of void region, will be
ignored when this option is selected.

This is easily noticed here where the ball valve void surface has no boundary layer mesh attached to it.
The task also provides the freedom to choose specific surfaces associated with the selected regions for adding
the boundary layers through the ‘selected-zones’ and ‘selected-labels’ options. Pick either of these options
depending on whether you want to select the surfaces by zones or by labels.

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(6:27) For demonstration, here we generated the boundary layer mesh on the pipe wall surface only in the inlet
fluid region using the ‘selected-zones’ option.

(6:47) There are a couple of other options in ‘Add In’ which provide additional flexibility in creating the
boundary layer mesh. The ‘named-regions’ option allows you to custom select the regions in which the
boundary layers need to be added. When Add In is set to named-regions and the Grow On option is set to
‘selected-zones’ or ‘selected-labels’, only the surfaces associated with the selected regions are listed.
For example, select the pipe’s inlet and the outlet fluid regions and grow layers on the pipe wall surface only
in these regions. Notice that the boundary layers collapse at the end of the inlet fluid region and are entirely
absent in the valve region, and then once again get created in the outlet fluid region. This is because the pipe
wall surface associated with the valve region was not selected for growing the boundary layer mesh.

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(7:50) The Add In input also provides the option to add layers in the solid regions if required by the user. This
is helpful in cases like conjugate heat transfer analysis, where it is recommended to add a few boundaries layer
cells in the solid region along with fluid region at the solid-fluid interface.

This is to avoid large cell jumps at the solid-fluid interface, for better prediction of temperature distribution
and gradients across the interface.
It is also possible to create boundary layer mesh on
baffles or zero thickness surfaces, which are generally
used to mimic 2-sided walls or interiors.
If the baffle is defined as a wall, the boundary layer
mesh will be created on both sides of baffle if Grow On
is set to any option that includes wall surfaces.

If the baffle is an internal region, boundary layer mesh

can be created by setting ‘Grow on’ option to ‘selected-
labels’ and picking the baffle surface.
Additionally, there are two advanced options,
1. First is the ‘Ignore Boundary Layers at Acute Angles?’ which when set to ‘yes’ will automatically skip
boundary layer generation where there are acute angles.
2. Second is the ‘Modify Surface Mesh at Invalid Normals’ which will automatically change the surface
mesh where invalid normal faces are detected so that boundary layer mesh grows in proper direction,
away from the boundary.
For further details please refer to the user guide.
From all the above discussion, it is clear that a combination of ‘Add In’ and ‘Grow on’ options can be used
to pick and choose where the boundary layer mesh is created. In fact, here is an example where different offset
methods, with different mesh size controls are employed in different regions of our demo problem. To briefly
put, there is an enormous amount of flexibility that is provided for the user to define the boundary layer mesh.

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To summarize, we learnt that the:
‘Add In’ and ‘Grow On’ options of the Add Boundary
Layers task can be used to define where to grow the
boundary layers in the computational model.
• The ‘Add In’ option can be used to select regions.
• The ‘Grow On’ option is used to select surfaces
within those regions.
We discussed the different options in ‘Grow On’ and their
effect on boundary layer mesh generation.
Finally, we noted that, not only can boundary layers be
added in fluid regions as a whole, but also in selected
regions and even in solid regions as well using the ‘Add In’
option.

References

[1] "Ansys Innovation Space," [Online]. Available: https://courses.ansys.com/index.php/courses/add-boundary-

layers/lessons/how-to-specify-locations-of-boundary-layer-mesh-generation-lesson-3/.

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[2] "Ansys Learning (YouTube)," [Online]. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njtj9FloM7g&ab_channel=AnsysLearning.

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