Hi - I'm currently working on implementing adaptive remeshing within plaxis 2D. 1) Do you have any prior experience or resources you can guide me to on this? 2) Is there a way of manually defining mesh node points, stress points etc. in plaxis? i.e. could I generate a mesh using an third party mesh generation software and import it?
Thank you
Mesh generation or refinement in PLAXIS can be controlled using helper lines or points or surfaces and by changing the coarseness factor. Size of elements or location of nodes or stress points cannot be easily controlled in a large or complex model. It is possible to control these only in a very simple model which has only a few nodes. Stress point generation cannot be modified as these are generated automatically. Before the mesh generation, we have intersection that takes place. Also mesh cannot be imported in PLAXIS only geometry can be imported which can be meshed within PLAXIS.
The intersection is the procedure that automatically occurs when you switch from Soil or Structures mode to Mesh, Flow conditions or Staged construction model. During this procedure, any objects created in the blue modes (Soil or Structures modes) are intersected and new objects are created that are the split items of the parent objects. The more the intersections occur in the model, the more difficult it becomes to control nodal locations.You can use the coarseness factor to increase or decrease the number of nodes in the model and use helper lines or surfaces or points to force nodes to generate at these locations. Hope this helps.