All-hexahedral mesh generation via inside-out advancing front based on harmonic fields

The generation of hexahedral meshes is an open problem that has undergone significant research. This paper deals with a novel inside-out advancing front method to generate unstructured all-hexahedral meshes for given volumes. Two orthogonal harmonic fields, principal and radial harmonic fields, are generated to guide the inside-out advancing front process based on a few user interactions. Starting from an initial hexahedral mesh inside the given volume, we advance the boundary quadrilateral mesh along the streamlines of radial field and construct layers of hexahedral elements. To ensure high quality and uniform size of the hexahedral mesh, quadrilateral elements are decomposed in such a way that no non-hexahedral element is produced. For complex volume with branch structures, we segment the complex volume into simple sub-volumes that are suitable for our method. Experimental results show that our method generates high quality all-hexahedral meshes for the given volumes.     

Higher-order Finite Elements for Hybrid Meshes Using New Nodal Pyramidal Elements

We provide a comprehensive study of arbitrarily high-order finite elements defined on pyramids. We propose a new family of high-order nodal pyramidal finite element which can be used in hybrid meshes which include hexahedra, tetrahedra, wedges and pyramids. Finite elements matrices can be evaluated through approximate integration, and we show that the order of convergence of the method is conserved. Numerical results demonstrate the efficiency of hybrid meshes compared to pure tetrahedral meshes or hexahedral meshes obtained by splitting tetrahedra into hexahedra.     

Stable Real-Time Surgical Cutting Simulation of Deformable Objects Embedded with Arbitrary Triangular Meshes

Surgical simulators need to simulate deformation and cutting of deformable objects. Adaptive octree mesh based cutting methods embed the deformable objects into octree meshes that are recursively refined near the cutting tool trajectory. Deformation is only applied to the octree meshes; thus the deformation instability problem caused by degenerated elements is avoided. Biological tissues and organs usually contain complex internal structures that are ignored by previous work. In this paper the deformable objects are modeled as voxels connected by links and embedded inside adaptive octree meshes. Links swept by the cutting tool are disconnected and object surface meshes are reconstructed from disconnected links. Two novel methods for embedding triangular meshes as internal structures are proposed. The surface mesh embedding method is applicable to arbitrary triangular meshes, but these meshes have no physical properties. The material sub-region embedding method associates the interiors enclosed by the triangular meshes with physical properties, but requires that these meshes are watertight, and have no self-intersections, and their smallest features are larger than a voxel. Some local features are constructed in a pre-calculation stage to increase simulation performance. Simulation tests show that our methods can cut embedded structures in a way consistent with the cutting of the deformable objects. Cut fragments can also deform correctly along with the deformable objects.     

Surface remeshing with robust high-order reconstruction

Remeshing is an important problem in variety of applications, such as finite element methods and geometry processing. Surface remeshing poses some unique challenges, as it must deliver not only good mesh quality but also good geometric accuracy. For applications such as finite elements with high-order elements (quadratic or cubic elements), the geometry must be preserved to high-order (third-order or higher) accuracy, since low-order accuracy may undermine the convergence of numerical computations. The problem is particularly challenging if the CAD model is not available for the underlying geometry, and is even more so if the surface meshes contain some inverted elements. We describe remeshing strategies that can simultaneously produce high-quality triangular meshes, untangling mildly folded triangles and preserve the geometry to high-order of accuracy. Our approach extends our earlier works on high-order surface reconstruction and mesh optimization by enhancing its robustness with a geometric limiter for under-resolved geometries. We also integrate high-order surface reconstruction with surface mesh adaptation techniques, which alter the number of triangles and nodes. We demonstrate the utilization of our method to meshes for high-order finite elements, biomedical image-based surface meshes, and complex interface meshes in fluid simulations.     

Efficient methods to visualize finite element meshes

This article describes implementation details of a graphical editor which is intended for efficient 3D visualization of finite element meshes. The purpose of this program is to prepare the input data for the finite element method – a widely known method for numerical solutions of scientific and engineering problems described by partial differential equations. Nowadays, increasing demand on accuracy of the calculation through the boom of parallel computing involves the use of finer and more detailed finite element meshes. However, the meshes with a very large number of elements and nodes cause problems with visualization in commonly used programs that are very slow, unresponsive and for some operations often unusable. Therefore, efficient data structures and algorithms were designed and implemented to enable fast work with very large finite element meshes.     

A CPU–GPU framework for optimizing the quality of large meshes

The automatic generation of 3D finite element meshes (FEM) is still a bottleneck for the simulation of large fluid dynamic problems. Although today there are several algorithms that can generate good meshes without user intervention, in cases where the geometry changes during the calculation and thousands of meshes must be constructed, the computational cost of this process can exceed the cost of the FEM. There has been a lot of work in FEM parallelization and the algorithms work well in different parallel architectures, but at present there has not been much success in the parallelization of mesh generation methods. This paper will present a massive parallelization scheme for re-meshing with tetrahedral elements using the local modification algorithm. This method is frequently used to improve the quality of elements once the mesh has been generated, but we will show it can also be applied as a regeneration process, starting with the distorted and invalid mesh of the previous step. The parallelization is carried out using OpenCL and OpenMP in order to test the method in a multiple CPU architecture and also in Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Finally we present the speedup and quality results obtained in meshes with hundreds of thousands of elements and different parallel APIs.     

Adaptive boundary layer meshing for viscous flow simulations

A procedure for anisotropic mesh adaptation accounting for mixed element types and boundary layer meshes is presented. The method allows to automatically construct meshes on domains of interest to accurately and efficiently compute key flow quantities, especially near wall quantities like wall shear stress. The new adaptive approach uses local mesh modification procedures in a manner that maintains layered and graded elements near the walls, which are popularly known as boundary layer or semi-structured meshes, with highly anisotropic elements of mixed topologies. The technique developed is well suited for viscous flow applications where exact knowledge of the mesh resolution over the computational domain required to accurately resolve flow features of interest is unknown a priori. We apply the method to two types of problem cases; the first type, which lies in the field of hemodynamics, involves pulsatile flow in blood vessels including a porcine aorta case with a stenosis bypassed by a graft whereas the other involves high-speed flow through a double throat nozzle encountered in the field of aerodynamics.     

Hexahedral mesh smoothing via local element regularization and global mesh optimization

The quality of finite element meshes is one of the key factors that affect the accuracy and reliability of finite element analysis results. In order to improve the quality of hexahedral meshes, we present a novel hexahedral mesh smoothing algorithm which combines a local regularization for each hexahedral mesh, using dual element based geometric transformation, with a global optimization operator for all hexahedral meshes. The global optimization operator is composed of three main terms, including the volumetric Laplacian operator of hexahedral meshes and the geometric constraints of surface meshes which keep the volumetric details and the surface details, and another is the transformed node displacements condition which maintains the regularity of all elements. The global optimization operator is formulated as a quadratic optimization problem, which is easily solved by solving a sparse linear system. Several experimental results are presented to demonstrate that our method obtains higher quality results than other state-of-the-art approaches.     

DARSS: a hybrid mesh smoother for all hexahedral meshes

A method for smoothing hexahedral meshes has been developed. The method consists of two phases. In the first phase, the nodes are moved based on an explicit formulation. A constraint has also been implemented to prevent the deterioration of elements associated with the node being moved. The second phase of the method is optismoothing based on the Nelder–Mead simplex method. The summation of the Jacobian of all the elements sharing a node has been taken as the function to be maximized. The method has been tested on meshes up to 18,305 hexahedral elements and was found to be stable and improved the mesh in about 112.6 s on an Intel Centrino^? 1.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM machine. The method thus has the advantage of being effective as well as being computationally efficient.     

Transverse shear oscillations in four-node quadrilateral plate elements

Numerical results show that the transverse shears are free of oscillation for regular or quasi-regular meshes of four-node plate elements based on Mindlin-Reissner theory. However, even small perturbations of these meshes can introduce severe oscillations throughout the mesh. These findings apply to the underintegrated elements with and without stabilization and to the fully integrated elements which use assumed shear strains. A filtering procedure capable of recovering improved shears is presented.     

一种大型三维有限元网格的显示和高效消隐方法

本文提出了一种面向ＡｕｔｏＣＡＤ的大型三限元网格的显示和高效消隐方法，可实现８－２０个节点三维正确显示，并大大节省消隐的运算时间。     

Generation of Tetrahedral Meshes with Multiple Elements through Thin Sections

Finite element simulations in domains with strong gradients across thin sections typically require meshes with multiple elements through these sections to accurately capture the solution. Most of the published techniques for isotropic mesh generation are not suited for the creation of such meshes in general, arbitrarily complex, non-manifold domains. In this paper, an automatic method is described for identification of thin sections of a domain and anisotropic refinement of an initial mesh to introduce a user-requested number of elements through the thin sections. The method uses local mesh modification operations to effect the refinement and subsequent realignment of edges along the thickness direction and perpendicular to it. Results are presented for a number of general models to illustrate the capability of the mesh generator.     

Feature-Sensitive Tetrahedral Mesh Generation with Guaranteed Quality

Tetrahedral meshes are being extensively used in finite element methods (FEM). This paper proposes an algorithm to generate feature-sensitive and high-quality tetrahedral meshes from an arbitrary surface mesh model. A top-down octree subdivision is conducted on the surface mesh and a set of tetrahedra are constructed using adaptive body-centered cubic (BCC) lattices. Special treatments are given to the tetrahedra near the surface such that the quality of the resulting tetrahedral mesh is provably guaranteed: the smallest dihedral angle is always greater than 5.71°. The meshes generated by our method are not only adaptive from the interior to the boundary, but also feature-sensitive on the surface with denser elements in high-curvature regions where geometric feature most likely reside. A variety of experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of this algorithm.     

多边形单元网格自动生成技术

近年来兴起的多边形有限元方法,在有限元计算中采用多边形单元划分网格,不仅可以更好地适应求解区域的几何形状,而且增加了网格划分的灵活性。为了更方便有效地生成多边形单元网格,在Delaunay三角形的基础上,通过将共圆Delaunay三角形合并为一个圆内接多边形,首先提出了Delaunay多边形的概念,进而提出了一种多边形网格自动生成的Delaunay多边形化算法。利用该Delaunay多边形化技术,对工程中常见的几何形状进行网格划分的具体算例表明,Delaunay多边形化方法可以生成性质优良的多边形单元网格。     

A two-dimensional mesh generator for variable order triangular and rectangular elements

An improved method is presented for generating variable order elements by superelement generation. This method is simple to apply and requires less execution time in comparison with other variable order mesh generators. Depending on geometrical complexity and material variation, the superelements are manually determined to be refined into high or low order elements. Different mesh generation subroutines are employed to generate elements of different orders. The refined elements of different orders are finally patched to form a hybrid mesh. A FORTRAN program is given to generate finite element meshes of linear and quadratic triangular and rectangular elements automatically.     

Automatic p-version mesh generation for curved domains

To achieve the exponential rates of convergence possible with the p-version finite element method requires properly constructed meshes. In the case of piecewise smooth domains, these meshes are characterized by having large curved elements over smooth portions of the domain and geometrically graded curved elements to isolate the edge and vertex singularities that are of interest. This paper presents a procedure under development for the automatic generation of such meshes for general three-dimensional domains defined in solid modeling systems. Two key steps in the procedure are the determination of the singular model edges and vertices, and the creation of geometrically graded elements around those entities. The other key step is the use of general curved element mesh modification procedures to correct any invalid elements created by the curving of mesh entities on the model boundary, which is required to ensure a properly geometric approximation of the domain. Example meshes are included to demonstrate the features of the procedure.

Topological refinement procedures for triangular finite element meshes

This paper presents a topological approach to improve the quality of unstructured triangular finite element meshes. Topological improvement procedures are presented both for elements that are interior to the mesh and for elements connected to the boundary. Optimal ordering of the topology improvement operations and their efficient implementation is also discussed. Several example meshes are included to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in improving element quality in a finite element mesh.     

Efficient implementation of quadrilaterals with high coarse-mesh accuracy

Quadrilateral elements for plane stress and strain are formulated so as to achieve high coarse-mesh accuracy, particularly for bending problems and incompressible materials. The Hu-Washizu variational principle is used in conjunction with an orthogonal projection so that the resulting element stiffness requires no matrix inversions. Results are given for several problems, including distorted meshes, and the elements exhibit excellent performance for coarse meshes.     

A hybrid ant colony optimization approach for finite element mesh decomposition

This paper examines the application of the ant colony optimization algorithm to the partitioning of unstructured adaptive meshes for parallel explicit time-stepping finite element analysis. The concept of the ant colony optimization technique for finding approximate solutions to combinatorial optimization problems is described.The application of ant colony optimization for partitioning finite element meshes based on triangular elements is described.A recursive greedy algorithm optimization method is also presented as a local optimization technique to improve the quality of the solutions given by the ant colony optimization algorithm. The partitioning is based on the recursive bisection approach.The mesh decomposition is carried out using normal and predictive modes for which the predictive mode uses a trained multilayered feed-forward neural network which estimates the number of triangular elements that will be generated after finite elements mesh generation is carried out.The performance of the proposed hybrid approach for the recursive bisection of finite element meshes is examined by decomposing two mesh examples.     

Interactive point-based rendering of higher-order tetrahedral data

Computational simulations frequently generate solutions defined over very large tetrahedral volume meshes containing many millions of elements. Furthermore, such solutions may often be expressed using non-linear basis functions. Certain solution techniques, such as discontinuous Galerkin methods, may even produce non-conforming meshes. Such data is difficult to visualize interactively, as it is far too large to fit in memory and many common data reduction techniques, such as mesh simplification, cannot be applied to non-conforming meshes. We introduce a point-based visualization system for interactive rendering of large, potentially non-conforming, tetrahedral meshes. We propose methods for adaptively sampling points from non-linear solution data and for decimating points at run time to fit GPU memory limits. Because these are streaming processes, memory consumption is independent of the input size. We also present an order-independent point rendering method that can efficiently render volumes on the order of 20 million tetrahedra at interactive rates.