This post explains briefly how can we get a smooth mesh when using the snappyHexMesh in OpenFOAM 2.0.

The main ingredient is the ‘surfaceFeatureExtract’ utility.

Here are the steps:

1- blockMesh: the BCs can be defined here, example: inlet and outlet patches.

2- extract the surface edge from the .stl file, example: tank.stl
command : “surfaceFeatureExtract -includedAngle 150 -writeObj constant/triSurface/tank.stl features”

this utiliy will create .eMesh file in /constant/triSurface/ : example tank.eMesh

3- in the snappyHexMeshDict, edge refinement is made by referring the eMesh file name, example: tank.eMesh.

4- run the snappyHexmesh utility.

Enjoy!