Finite element mesh generation

The capabilities of a geometric modeller are extended towards finite element analysis by a mesh generator which extracts all its geometric and topological information from the model. A coarse mesh is created and subsequently refined to a suitable finite element mesh, which accomodates material properties, loadcase and analysis requirements. The mesh may be optimized by adaptive refinement, ie according to estimates of the discretization errors.A survey of research and development in geometric modelling and finite element analysis is presented, then an implementation of a mesh generator for 3D curvilinear and solid objects is described in detail.