GiD forum

Dear GiD team,

I'm trying to create a mesh for the rock volume that contains a small fault.

For example, if I define the rock with a single volume element and the fault with a single surface element (that is located inside the rock), how can I create a 2D triangle and 3D tetrahedral elements for the fault and rock, respectively?
Attached is an example GiD file.

I would really appreciate If you can give me some comment or tip on this question.

Kindly Regards,

Kenji Furui
Waseda University

Your surface is not connected with the volume, its triangles and nodes would be independent of the tetrahedra of the volume.

It is possible to set easily some geometric points to be forced to be nodes on the mesh of a volume,
Mesh->Mesh criteria->Force points to->Volume mesh

But this options is not available to 'force lines' or 'force surfaces' (and if the amount and distribution of 'forced points' is too big the mesh could become too bad or impossible)

In your case it is necessary that the surface is boundary of the volume. Can create extra surfaces to split the volume in tho volumes, with the surface of interest as part of the splitting surfaces.

In your simply model it is easy to do: but in a general model could be too difficult
I attach my GiD model splitted and with the kind of mesh that you want:

Thank you, Escolano. I will follow your suggestion splittig the volume element that contains fault surface elements.

Kenji Furui
Waseda University