Idealization of CAD model for a simulation by a finite element method

Nowadays, numeric simulation becomes one of the most important activities of the product development cycle. To accelerate the design and simulation tasks, it is necessary to adapt the CAD model before the simulation process. This paper presents a method based on an original algorithm in order to adapt and simplify the design geometric model to a simulation by finite elements method. It consists in the idealization of the CAD geometry by eliminating details (holes, chamfers, etc.). These details increase the computing time due to a refined mesh in these details, which are considered as stress hubs, without providing more precision in the simulation. An implementation of the proposed algorithm using the Open Cascade platform is also presented. The last part of this paper presents two examples of mechanical parts, which are simulated before and after idealization. The results of simulation illustrate the major contribution of the proposed method in terms of computing time gain, without so much changing the exactitude of results.