In 3DEC, a discontinuous medium is represented as an assemblage of discrete blocks. Boundaries between blocks are treated as discontinuities along which large displacements and rotations between blocks are allowed. Individual blocks can behave as deformable material, in which case the block is subdivided into a mesh of finite difference elements (i.e., continuous assemblages of zones).
TYPE
TOOL
APPLICATION
MAIN ADVANTAGE
DESCRIPTION
Structured
Primitives Commands & FISH
- Available from the command line
- Any type of problem
- Better suited for simple geometries
- Can results in poor quality and heavy mesh for complex geometries
- Efficiency
- Includes tunnel primitive
- Planar cuts commands can be used to intersect blocks with any number of planes
- Includes cube command to generate a region based on a user-defined outline
- FISH language can be used to automate planar cuts to construct the desired geometry (such as complex tunnel shapes, for example)
Structured
VRML to Block converter EXE |
- Executable requiring VRML input file
- Any type of problem
- Handles any closed convex volumes
- Distributed free with3DEC
- Efficiency
- Quality
- Uses common VRML CAD format
- Allows automatically creation of blocks for import into3DEC based on closed convex volumes (input in VRML format)
Structured
Interactive BlockRanger
- Available from the Rhino interface
- Any type of problem
- Better suited for simple to moderately complex geometries
- Output of hex blocks (v1.2 and up) and tetrahedral blocks
- Quality
- CAD system environment
- Itasca interactive mapped mesher
- Generates hexahedral blocks
Unstructured
Interactive Griddle (NEW)
- Available from the Rhino interface
- Any type of problem
- Better suited for complex geometries
- Efficiency
- NEW Itasca interactive automesher
- Generates tetrahedral and hex-dominant meshes