Ansys Meshing – Inflation

Inflation layers are thin prism cells stacked along the walls of the domain. They exist because the velocity gradient normal to a wall is much steeper than anywhere else in the flow, and a purely tetrahedral mesh would need a huge number of cells to capture it.

In Ansys Meshing you control them with three numbers: the height of the first layer, how many layers you stack, and the growth rate between them. The first layer height is what fixes your y+ value, so it should follow the turbulence model you intend to use rather than a round number. You can estimate it with our Y+ and first layer thickness calculator.

Inflation can be applied face by face, or you can let the Use Automatic Inflation option choose the boundaries for you, either program controlled or taken from a Named Selection prepared in advance.

In this tutorial, you will learn to use the Inflation tool in Ansys Meshing to control the boundary layer mesh near walls for more accurate CFD simulations.