17.11.1 What are remeshing rules?

Remeshing rules enable ABAQUS/CAE to adapt your mesh iteratively to meet error indicator goals that you have specified. You can allow ABAQUS/CAE to perform the iterative remeshing and analysis operations, or you can remesh manually and study the effect of your remeshing rule on the mesh and the resulting analysis. ABAQUS/CAE remeshes the faces and cells to which you assigned an adaptivity rule and any adjacent faces or cells; the mesh on other regions does not change. For more information, see “Adaptive remeshing: overview,” Section 12.3.1 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual.

A remeshing rule describes all aspects of your adaptive meshing specification:

The region to which the remeshing rule is applied. You can apply a remeshing rule to the entire model or to selected regions.
A specific step during which ABAQUS/CAE will apply the rule. The remeshing rule will be applied only during this step; however, you can apply a different remeshing rule with the same settings to another step in your model.
The error indicator output variables—the output variables that will be used to calculate the error estimate. For more information, see “Error indicators,” Section 12.3.2 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual.
The sizing method—the method that ABAQUS/CAE will use to calculate the size of the elements in the mesh. For more information, see “Solution-based mesh sizing,” Section 12.3.3 of the ABAQUS Analysis User's Manual.
Any constraints on the remeshing calculations.

A remeshing rule works in combination with the edge seeding, element type, and meshing method to determine the mesh at a particular adaptivity iteration. Remeshing rules are stored in the model database and are maintained between sessions. To create a remeshing rule, select AdaptivityRemeshing RuleCreate from the main menu bar. For more information, see “Creating a remeshing rule,” Section 17.19.1, in the online HTML version of this manual.

You can define multiple remeshing rules over multiple regions of your model. If you apply multiple remeshing rules to the same region of a model, ABAQUS/CAE applies a conservative element size specification, and the rule that defines a finer mesh at a particular point takes precedence. If you assign a remeshing rule to a dependent instance, ABAQUS/CAE remeshes the original part and each dependent instance of the part inherits the same mesh.

ABAQUS/CAE requests error indicator output variables in every job that you create while a remeshing rule is active. The remeshing rule has no effect on the mesh during the first job. However, during the first job ABAQUS uses the remeshing rule to calculate the error indicator output variables. In subsequent adaptive remesh iterations the remeshing rule augments your mesh size specification to produce a mesh that attempts to optimize element size and placement to achieve the error indicator goals described in the rule.