Solid meshing of 3D geological model in finite element analysis: a case study of East Azerbaijan, NW Iran

Abstract

The aim of this research is ideal solid meshing of a 3D geological body including topography for studies of finite element analysis. In many numerical analyses, solid meshing is abstruse and consumes much time and high CPU usage. This complexity increases with variety of shapes geometry and height heterogeneity of a surface. In geology, this issue is important and usually results to the removing topography. For this order, we try to mesh the topographic surface and create a shell block diagram in which top side is topographic surface. By having mesh spacing from topography, we defined shape functions of linear quadrilateral meshes for shell block. The sweep mesh applying in analytical software makes the block diagram ready for defining solid meshes. Since topographic loading and static analysis closely relate to each other, linear tetrahedron meshes are suitable for static analysis. In this way, with a minimum number of nodes, solid meshing is possible and for sensitive areas, there is enough space to regenerate finer meshes. Therefore, following the procedure of shape function definitions from linear plane to solid elements, we can idealize solid meshing for numerical analysis.