Abstract
Mid-surface abstraction is an effective simplification method for thin-wall models. A mid-surface model after abstraction can reduce the complexity of finite element analysis greatly. There are some methods for mid-surface abstraction. However, they are not satisfactory to handle complex models. To address this problem, this study proposes a mid-surface abstraction approach based on virtual model decomposition. The concept of face group pair is proposed to help virtually decompose thin-wall models into several virtual simple parts, and the connections between the parts are classified into three types. The topological boundary edges of the mid-surface model are then generated correctly with the help of the connection types. Meanwhile, an improved mesh-based discrete method is proposed to calculate the geometry of the mid-surface with high accuracy. Finally, some typical complex models are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.