How much computer memory is required to produce a mesh of a given number of elements?
|
This is a difficult question to answer accurately but some general guidelines can be provided. Note that, due to the underlying meshing techniques employed, memory use for the final mesh size for ICEMCFD Tetra can vary widely from case to case due to the Octree meshing approach which meshes a bounding box surrounding the target model. If the ratio of the bounding box volume to the model volume is large then the memory efficiency for a given final model size decreases. The element counts reported here are for the bounding box mesh rather than the final cut mesh size. Memory estimates listed below are extracted from example cases and from developer input of theoretical usage. The CFX-Mesh and ICEMCFD Tetra meshes do not include prism layers. The memory estimates are only for the mesh generation processes and do not include memory usage for storage of the background geometric model. Summary: CFX-Mesh -- 80 Bytes / element ICEMCFD Tetra -- 80+ Bytes / element ICEMCFD Hexa -- 65 Bytes / element Specific Example Cases: Box Geometry: A simple unit cube geometry to run some best case scenario memory tests. CFX-Mesh A - 1.13M elements, 110 MB memory = 97 Bytes / element CFX-Mesh B - 2.7M elements, 230 MB memory = 85 Bytes / element ICEM Tetra A - 2M elements, 176MB memory = 88 Bytes / element ICEM Tetra B - 15M elements, 1300MB memory = 87 Bytes / element ICEM Hexa - 8M elements, 530MB memory = 66 Bytes / element Complicated Real-World Geometry 1: A previously setup model of some rather complicated molded parts (>1000 surfaces). This model was only meshed in ICEM CFD Tetra. Due to the meshing approach of ICEM CFD Tetra, real-world geometry can yield significantly higher memory usage than idealized examples and as such it is useful to show these ICEMCFD Tetra results. The element count shown is for the maximum element count stored in memory (bounding box) rather than the final model element count. ICEM Tetra - 5M elements, 1100MB memory = 220 Bytes / element Complicated Real-World Geometry 2:A model previously setup in ICEM CFD Hexa. ICEM Hexa - 8.5M elements, 535MB memory = 63 Bytes / element |
||
|