Unable to create mesh for .ipt in FEA software

[Anonymous]

I am trying to run the FEA software on Inventor 2017 and I am getting a message that says "Error: Solid meshing.  No additional information is available. Internal error in mesher." pointing at a small hole in part.  I have tried removing the hole but it just moves the error probe to a different spot in the part.  

[DRoam]

@Anonymous, most of your model looks very good and clean. But I think I found the issue. It resides here:

The issue is you have two faces which are in direct contact but are not "merged" to form a seam. This would be fine if they were two separate parts, because Inventor would just create a bonded contact between the two and would know that it needs to match the mesh between the two faces. But because this is a un-bonded seam between two faces on the same part, Inventor doesn't know quite what to do. It pointed to certain holes as the problem area, but those holes are fine. 

Here's what I did and was able to get a mesh using the default settings without any problems: I just used "Delete face" with "heal" enabled and deleted the small face that touches the larger face pointed to above. I've attached your part with this modification made. Basically, doing this bonds the two faces together and creates a seam. Your sheet metal functionality won't work right with this done, so you'll need to suppress the "Delete face" feature once you're done with your FEA.

Making this change only affected one constraint (Flush:2). I personally would flush two of the Origin Planes (the XY planes in this case) rather than faces on the part. This is more robust and will hold no matter what features you change or remove on your parts.

Hope this helps, let me know if it resolves your issue.

[blair]

Good call, if you get parts separating from one another in your assembly when you run the FEA, increase the boundary gap in the FEA set-up settings. Sometimes we create models and our allowable model gap for assembly/mfg is greater than the boundary gap settings. This causes the FEA solver to treat the parts as separate entities. 

[DRoam]

Good tip, blair.

@Anonymous, I should also point out that I also made this change:

I did this because tiny features and small gaps can result in meshing complications and/or stress concentrations. I would remove those unless you're specifically studying how those minute features affect your design, in which case I would begin by creating a simulation with just these two parts, applying appropriate forces and constraints, and using a very refined mesh to analyze those small features. Once you're convinced that part of your design is ok, fill in those gaps and remove the small fillet temporarily for the sake of your larger FEA study. Then restore it to true fabrication geometry once your design verification is done.

If stress in those areas isn't a concern to begin with, or if you'll be welding in that area and the two pieces will essentially be bonded where that gap is so you're not worried about it, you can just remove the gap and fillet and skip that first study altogether. Either way, I personally wouldn't run the full assembly with those small gaps and fillets present.