Bad mesh quality

Question

Hello to all, 
 
 I am working with a bit complicated geometry. I have simplified the geometry as much as possible. I have tried different mesh settings but still I have a few cells with very bad quality. How much it might affect the results? Do you have any suggestions to solve the problem? 
 
 Cheers, 
 Reyhaneh

Stefanos Papavasileiou · Answer

Dear Reyhaneh, 
 Indeed, there are cases that due to the details of soil stratigraphy and/or of structures included the mesh quality cannot be lower than a recommended value of 0.01. 
 Note that most of the times the problems may arise during calculations with elements especially with quality lower than 1E-05, however, it is not possible to know beforehand. That is why we recommend performing any changes to the model to prevent low-quality elements as you may run a calculation that takes a long time and then encounter an error which will take you back to changing the geometry, re-meshing and re-calculating. 
 When we mention it may affect the results, we refer to either having divergence in the analysis or local high values for strains, stresses or pore pressures. Most of the cases can be recognized by inspecting the Output results of the performed steps.