Cross section and tread mesh generation using

BudMesh2D and TreadMesh

Comparison with an other typical Mesh-Generator
Etienne Jankovich, Csongor Tordai and Andras Kiss
BUD Calcul Technique et Scientifique
25 Rue du Marechal Foch,
78000 Versailles
France

budmesh.com

Status of September 2004

updated partially in September 2006
ABSTRACT: 2D plate and 3D hexa mesh generation capability applicable to all structural and fluid
mechanics, tire manufacturing, etc.

KEY WORDS: all quad structured cross section meshes, all hexa meshes, wire frame to solid conversion,
automatic shape recognition, automatic meshing.

All products, brand names or company names are the property of their respective holders.

For better viewing of the meshes please enlarge 500%.

BudMesh2D
BudMesh2D is a 2D all quad automatic mesh generator of the BUD Co., featuring a high speed
mesh generation capability applicable to all structural and fluid mechanics.
The meshing is carried out on the native geometry of multi-material parts, using the new BUD
open-source geometry toolbox(2006). The 3D Geometric Modeler is an object-oriented three-dimensional
(3D) geometric modeling engine.
Based on the observation that most of the CAD drafters are working on wire frame models we
have developed a wire frame to solid translator. This module is used in the case when only wire frame
models are available.
There are several input formats supported for the geometry, like the optional ACIS sat file, the
optional CATIA model file, IGES neutral and DXF files and also for export: FEMAP(from UGS) neutral,
ABAQUS and ASCII.

BudMesh2D main features

• Automatic cross section pre-processing

• The mesh is even more/less coarse in certain regions(for ex. in contact regions)
• Automatic recognition of the regions needing a structured (mapped) mesh
• Several material types including Hyper-elastic and BUD-hyper-elastic type
• Automatic recognition of the specific parts of the tire cross sections (bead, thread, belts, inner
and outer sides)
• The materials and loads (forces, displacements etc) applied on the original geometry are
inherited by the generated mesh
• Local and global mesh refinement controlled by a single parameter
• Powerful smoothing algorithm
• Infinite undo/redo feature
• Very useful manual tools to manually correct the resulting mesh
• These tools do at user request combined manual/automatic meshing
• Rim-to-rim mesh taking into account manually/automatic way semi-product symmetries
• Full automatic modeling (internal pressure, mounting onto rim, detection of the composite
regions, and contact region with the soil…)
FIG. 1 – Half cross section meshed with all-quad option. Element number is 144 and the
overall error is 0.399 (0 means that all element are perfect quadrilaterals)- a purposely
coarse mesh needed in extreme cases for information compression .
FIG. 2 – Same cross section meshed with all-quad option, but refined. Element number is
475 and the overall error is 0.176 (0 means that all element are perfect quadrilaterals)

FIG. 3 –Same cross section meshed with all-quad option, but refined. Element number is
467 and the overall error is 0.176 (0 means that all element are perfect quadrilaterals)

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TreadMesh
TreadMesh is a 3D all quad mesh generator allowing to generate an all hex mesh for the thread
patterns of tires of the BUD Co.
The meshing is carried out on the native geometry of multi-material parts, using the BUD
geometry toolbox(2006).
There are several input formats supported for the geometry, IGES neutral
in particular. Meshes are exported in PATRAN neutral format.

TreadMesh main features

• The geometric attributes (upper, lower surfaces, etc) are input in the meshing process
• Boolean operations are carried out on the geometry
• Coarse mesh generation
• The mesh is generated taking into consideration the boundary surfaces in order to make a
continuous tread pattern around the tire circumference
• 3D smoothing
• Computation of the hex mesh quality control indices
• Export of the mesh in PATRAN neutral format.

TreadMesh constitutes a follow up meshing tool to BudMesh2D and a breakthrough on the meshing market
and procures a technological advance.

FIG. 4 – Tread pattern meshed with TreadMesh. The opposite sides of the mesh are
smoothened to permit continuous pattern arrangement.

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Comparing to Other Meshing SW (here dated 2003 from a University in
Korea):
AutoMesh(2003CADCAM)-presentation.pdf found by Google
written in Korean and partially translated into English(might contain
translation mistakes) with a comparative study of 2D tire mesh generators.
The BUDMESH2D results they showed have been suppressed
here as they were taken out context.

Below is shown the rim-to-rim mesh of a cross-section. Note that the mesh around the groove-corners is
too coarse. There are many triangles of low accuracy next or even on the footprint contact surface where a
perfect stress modeling is needed. BUD uses structured mesh all over the tread and the plies as shown
on its WEB site with code distribution to all the major tire/airspring manufacturers going back to the
year 2000. This type of quadrilateral mesh is known to be the most difficult to construct but is the
only one to give excellent stress results(structured mesh = with strictly four elements around any
internal node).
Exactly the same inaccuracy problem even worse happens as a triangle is put directly in their rim contact
region. BUDMESH2D not only constructs automatically a (structured) quad mesh there but adjusts
the mesh coarseness to the stress analyst ‘s convergence imperatives.

The cross-section is here symmetrical whereas this is usually not the case in real tires.
BUDMESH works also non-symmetrical cross-sections and is able to recognize symmetrical features
and to mesh them identically on both sides. Shape recognition is one of the strong sides of
BUDMESH2D. One can control and guide this algorithm manually too( for ex. to change from
unstructured to structured mesh in some semi-products).

Automesh generates an inversely refined mesh where areas of no stress raisers are finely meshed
and the ones with stress concentration have a coarse mesh. These coarse ( for ex. belt-edge) mesh regions
are unfortunately the direct result from their multi-middle line approach.

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The figures above show that starting from simply geometry---that is however not the
case in real tires---one can get a mesh with elements standing up well
perpendicularly to a kind of multi-middle line in the solid. Even in the simple geometry case the above
mesh is not appropriate for example in the area of the footprint where the elements need to be
perpendicular to the soil as this is done automatically in BUDMESH2D.
Also inadvertently the designers in the tire industry put very sharp corner
rubber end-plies around belt edges as shown above. These corners are automatically cut and meshed in
BUDMESH2D under user control. No such feature appears in this paper or in other published SW.
Note that no single algorithm such as the multi-middle line one is adaptable to all areas of the tire.
BUDMESH2D uses a dozen combined mesh-generation methods.

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Above is presented the cross-section with the critical points used to do the meshing.
Below in the left corner is shown the “manually” meshed tire with the well curved plies.
In BUDMESH2D this kind of mesh on the native geometry is done automatically for possible
automatic optimization purposes using BUD’ s optimizer CAFWIN. The element side ratios(mesh
quality indicators) are monitored/adapted and one can have any user defined value.

On the right side the mesh below simplifies too much the bead. On the contrary BUDMESH2D is a
mesh-generator that is able to furnish a very fine mesh where needed with a simple input. It has an
option for using 2nd order elements too. On the other side BUDMESH2D removes regions where the
material is under no stress and can mesh round cross section beads common to real tires.

The price of the all quad automatic BUDMESH2D is very reasonable considering that floating
licenses with a full maintenance( adjustment of the SW to the user needs) are available starting from 2
user packages (17000 Euro lease yearly for two seats) with a price decrease per user for larger orders.
Conclusion--- Many existing software is built on the false idea that a mesh should have a graphically
homogeneous balanced look. However the mesh of real tires is based not on graphical but on mechanical
considerations and on the “habits” of the individual designers. Thus it is not homogeneous with areas of
stress concentration finely meshed and triangles only used in non-critical regions. The best is to avoid
triangles like BUDMESH2D does. Also all the (unwise) habits of the designers drawing very sharp corner
endings and adding unstressed areas for decoration purposes must be corrected automatically.
Generally speaking any usable code must have shape recognition for all the well-known typical

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areas of the tire and use there proper mesh templates as done in BUDMESH2D.

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