Development of a multiblock procedure for automated generation of two-dimensional quadrilateral meshes of gear drives

Abstract

This article describes a new multiblock procedure for automated generation of two-dimensional quadrilateral meshes of gear drives. The typical steps of the multiblock schemes have been investigated in depth to obtain a fast and simple way to mesh planar sections of gear teeth, allowing local mesh refinement and minimizing the appearance of distorted elements in the mesh. The proposed procedure is completed with two different mesh quality enhancement techniques. One of them is applied before the mesh is generated, and reduces the distortion of the mesh without increasing the computational time of the meshing process. The other one is applied once the mesh is generated, and reduces the distortion of the elements by means of a mesh smoothing method. The performance of the proposed procedure has been illustrated with several numerical examples, which demonstrate its ability to mesh different gear geometries under several meshing boundary conditions.