Optimization of a regularized distortion measure to generate curved high‐order unstructured tetrahedral meshes

We present a robust method for generating high‐order nodal tetrahedral curved meshes. The approach consists of modifying an initial linear mesh by first, introducing high‐order nodes, second, displacing the boundary nodes to ensure that they are on the computer‐aided design surface, and third, smoothing and untangling the mesh obtained after the displacement of the boundary nodes to produce a valid curved high‐order mesh. The smoothing algorithm is based on the optimization of a regularized measure of the mesh distortion relative to the original linear mesh. This means that whenever possible, the resulting mesh preserves the geometrical features of the initial linear mesh such as shape, stretching, and size. We present several examples to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Furthermore, the examples show that the implementation of the optimization problem is robust and capable of handling situations in which the mesh before optimization contains a large number of invalid elements. We consider cases with polynomial approximations up to degree ten, large deformations of the curved boundaries, concave boundaries, and highly stretched boundary layer elements. The meshes obtained are suitable for high‐order finite element analyses. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A surface mesh smoothing and untangling method independent of the CAD parameterization

A method to optimize triangular and quadrilateral meshes on parameterized surfaces is proposed. The optimization procedure relocates the nodes on the surface to improve the quality (smooth) and ensures that the elements are not inverted (untangle). We detail how to express any measure for planar elements in terms of the parametric coordinates of the nodes. The extended measures can be used to check the quality and validity of a surface mesh. Then, we detail how to optimize any Jacobian-based distortion measure to obtain smoothed and untangled meshes with the nodes on the surface. We prove that this method is independent of the surface parameterization. Thus, it can optimize meshes on CAD surfaces defined by low-quality parameterizations. The examples show that the method can optimize meshes composed by a large number of inverted elements. Finally, the method can be extended to obtain high-order meshes with the nodes on the CAD surfaces.     

Simultaneous untangling and smoothing of moving grids

In this work, a technique for simultaneous untangling and smoothing of meshes is presented. It is based on an extension of an earlier mesh smoothing strategy developed to solve the computational mesh dynamics stage in fluid–structure interaction problems. In moving grid problems, mesh untangling is necessary when element inversion happens as a result of a moving domain boundary. The smoothing strategy, formerly published by the authors, is defined in terms of the minimization of a functional associated with the mesh distortion by using a geometric indicator of the element quality. This functional becomes discontinuous when an element has null volume, making it impossible to obtain a valid mesh from an invalid one. To circumvent this drawback, the functional proposed is transformed in order to guarantee its continuity for the whole space of nodal coordinates, thus achieving the untangling technique. This regularization depends on one parameter, making the recovery of the original functional possible as this parameter tends to 0. This feature is very important: consequently, it is necessary to regularize the functional in order to make the mesh valid; then, it is advisable to use the original functional to make the smoothing optimal. Finally, the simultaneous untangling and smoothing technique is applied to several test cases, including 2D and 3D meshes with simplicial elements. As an additional example, the application of this technique to a mesh generation case is presented. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new automatic adaptive 3D solid mesh generation scheme for thin‐walled structures

A new algorithm to generate three‐dimensional (3D) mesh for thin‐walled structures is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, the mesh generation procedure is divided into two distinct phases. In the first phase, a surface mesh generator is employed to generate a surface mesh for the mid‐surface of the thin‐walled structure. The surface mesh generator used will control the element size properties of the final mesh along the surface direction. In the second phase, specially designed algorithms are used to convert the surface mesh to a 3D solid mesh by extrusion in the surface normal direction of the surface. The extrusion procedure will control the refinement levels of the final mesh along the surface normal direction. If the input surface mesh is a pure quadrilateral mesh and refinement level in the surface normal direction is uniform along the whole surface, all hex‐meshes will be produced. Otherwise, the final 3D meshes generated will eventually consist of four types of solid elements, namely, tetrahedron, prism, pyramid and hexahedron. The presented algorithm is highly flexible in the sense that, in the first phase, any existing surface mesh generator can be employed while in the second phase, the extrusion procedure can accept either a triangular or a quadrilateral or even a mixed mesh as input and there is virtually no constraint on the grading of the input mesh. In addition, the extrusion procedure development is able to handle structural joints formed by the intersections of different surfaces. Numerical experiments indicate that the present algorithm is applicable to most practical situations and well‐shaped elements are generated. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

hp‐Generalized FEM and crack surface representation for non‐planar 3‐D cracks

A high‐order generalized finite element method (GFEM) for non‐planar three‐dimensional crack surfaces is presented. Discontinuous p‐hierarchical enrichment functions are applied to strongly graded tetrahedral meshes automatically created around crack fronts. The GFEM is able to model a crack arbitrarily located within a finite element (FE) mesh and thus the proposed method allows fully automated fracture analysis using an existing FE discretization without cracks. We also propose a crack surface representation that is independent of the underlying GFEM discretization and controlled only by the physics of the problem. The representation preserves continuity of the crack surface while being able to represent non‐planar, non‐smooth, crack surfaces inside of elements of any size. The proposed representation also provides support for the implementation of accurate, robust, and computationally efficient numerical integration of the weak form over elements cut by the crack surface. Numerical simulations using the proposed GFEM show high convergence rates of extracted stress intensity factors along non‐planar curved crack fronts and the robustness of the method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Octree‐based reasonable‐quality hexahedral mesh generation using a new set of refinement templates

An octree‐based mesh generation method is proposed to create reasonable‐quality, geometry‐adapted unstructured hexahedral meshes automatically from triangulated surface models without any sharp geometrical features. A new, easy‐to‐implement, easy‐to‐understand set of refinement templates is developed to perform local mesh refinement efficiently even for concave refinement domains without creating hanging nodes. A buffer layer is inserted on an octree core mesh to improve the mesh quality significantly. Laplacian‐like smoothing, angle‐based smoothing and local optimization‐based untangling methods are used with certain restrictions to further improve the mesh quality. Several examples are shown to demonstrate the capability of our hexahedral mesh generation method for complex geometries. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Insertion of triangulated surfaces into a meccano tetrahedral discretization by means of mesh refinement and optimization procedures

In this paper, we present a new method for inserting several triangulated surfaces into an existing tetrahedral mesh generated by the meccano method. The result is a conformal mesh where each inserted surface is approximated by a set of faces of the final tetrahedral mesh. First, the tetrahedral mesh is refined around the inserted surfaces to capture their geometric features. Second, each immersed surface is approximated by a set of faces from the tetrahedral mesh. Third, following a novel approach, the nodes of the approximated surfaces are mapped to the corresponding immersed surface. Fourth, we untangle and smooth the mesh by optimizing a regularized shape distortion measure for tetrahedral elements in which we move all the nodes of the mesh, restricting the movement of the edge and surface nodes along the corresponding entity they belong to. The refining process allows approximating the immersed surface for any initial meccano tetrahedral mesh. Moreover, the proposed projection method avoids computational expensive geometric projections. Finally, the applied simultaneous untangling and smoothing process delivers a high‐quality mesh and ensures that the immersed surfaces are interpolated. Several examples are presented to assess the properties of the proposed method.     

Automatic metric 3D surface mesh generation using subdivision surface geometrical model. Part 2: Mesh generation algorithm and examples

In this paper, a new metric advancing front surface mesh generation scheme is suggested. This new surface mesh generator is based on a new geometrical model employing the interpolating subdivision surface concept. The target surfaces to be meshed are represented implicitly by interpolating subdivision surfaces which allow the presence of various sharp and discontinuous features in the underlying geometrical model. While the main generation steps of the new generator are based on a robust metric surface triangulation kernel developed previously, a number of specially designed algorithms are developed in order to combine the existing metric advancing front algorithm with the new geometrical model. As a result, the application areas of the new mesh generator are largely extended and can be used to handle problems involving extensive changes in domain geometry. Numerical experience indicates that, by using the proposed mesh generation scheme, high quality surface meshes with rapid varying element size and anisotropic characteristics can be generated in a short time by using a low‐end PC. Finally, by using the pseudo‐curvature element‐size controlling metric to impose the curvature element‐size requirement in an implicit manner, the new mesh generation procedure can also generate finite element meshes with high fidelity to approximate the target surfaces accurately. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new finite point generation scheme using metric specifications

A new approach to generate finite point meshes on 2D flat surface and any bi‐variate parametric surfaces is suggested. It can be used to generate boundary‐conforming anisotropic point meshes with node spacing compatible with the metric specifications defined in a background point mesh. In contrast to many automatic mesh generation schemes, the advancing front concept is abandoned in the present method. A few simple basic operations including boundary offsetting, node insertion and node deletion are used instead. The point mesh generation schemeis initialized by a boundary offsetting procedure. The point mesh quality is then improved by node insertion and deletion such that optimally spaced nodes will fill up the entire problem domain. In addition to the point mesh generation scheme, a new way to define the connectivity of a point mesh is also suggested. Furthermore, based on the connectivity information, a new scheme to perform smoothing for a point mesh is proposed toimprove the node spacing quality of the mesh. Timing shows thatdue to the simple node insertion and deletion operations, the generation speed of the new scheme is nearly 10 times faster than a similar advancing front mesh generator. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive simplex cut‐cell method for high‐order discontinuous Galerkin discretizations of conjugate heat transfer problems

In this paper, we present a solution framework for high‐order discretizations of conjugate heat transfer problems on non‐body‐conforming meshes. The framework consists of and leverages recent developments in discontinuous Galerkin discretization, simplex cut‐cell techniques, and anisotropic output‐based adaptation. With the cut‐cell technique, the mesh generation process is completely decoupled from the interface definitions. In addition, the adaptive scheme combined with the discontinuous Galerkin discretization automatically adjusts the mesh in each sub‐domain and achieves high‐order accuracy in outputs of interest. We demonstrate the solution framework through several multi‐domained conjugate heat transfer problems consisting of laminar and turbulent flows, curved geometry, and highly coupled heat transfer regions. The combination of these attributes yield nonintuitive coupled interactions between fluid and solid domains, which can be difficult to capture with user‐generated meshes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Three‐dimensional grayscale‐free topology optimization using a level‐set based r‐refinement method

In this paper, we propose a three‐dimensional (3D) grayscale‐free topology optimization method using a conforming mesh to the structural boundary, which is represented by the level‐set method. The conforming mesh is generated in an r‐refinement manner; that is, it is generated by moving the nodes of the Eulerian mesh that maintains the level‐set function. Although the r‐refinement approach for the conforming mesh generation has many benefits from an implementation aspect, it has been considered as a difficult task to stably generate 3D conforming meshes in the r‐refinement manner. To resolve this task, we propose a new level‐set based r‐refinement method. Its main novelty is a procedure for minimizing the number of the collapsed elements whose nodes are moved to the structural boundary in the conforming mesh; in addition, we propose a new procedure for improving the quality of the conforming mesh, which is inspired by Laplacian smoothing. Because of these novelties, the proposed r‐refinement method can generate 3D conforming meshes at a satisfactory level, and 3D grayscale‐free topology optimization is realized. The usefulness of the proposed 3D grayscale‐free topology optimization method is confirmed through several numerical examples. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The construction of improved‐quality mesh on a curved surface using mapping factors

Abstract

The Delaunay triangulation is broadly used on flat surfaces to generate well‐shaped elements. But the properties of Delaunay triangulation do not exist on curved surfaces whose Jacobians are different. In this paper we will present a modified algorithm to improve the shape of triangulation for the curved surface. The experiment results show that making use of “mapping factors” in the Delaunay triangulation and Laplacian method can produce better mesh (most aspect ratios≤3) on a curved surface.     

Meshing curved wire‐frame models through energy minimization and packing of ellipses

In the initial phase of structural part design, wire‐frame models are sometimes used to represent the shapes of curved surfaces. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of a curved surface requires a well shaped, graded mesh that smoothly interpolates the wire frame. This paper describes an algorithm that generates such a triangular mesh from a wire‐frame model in the following two steps: (1) construct a triangulated surface by minimizing the strain energy of the thin‐plate‐bending model, and (2) generate a mesh by the bubble meshing method on the projected plane and project it back onto the triangulated surface. Since the mesh elements are distorted by the projection, the algorithm generates an anisotropic mesh on the projected plane so that an isotropic mesh results from the final projection back onto the surface. Extensions of the technique to anisotropic meshing and quadrilateral meshing are also discussed. The algorithm can generate a well‐shaped, well‐graded mesh on a smooth curved surface. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An L∞–Lp mesh‐adaptive method for computing unsteady bi‐fluid flows

This paper discusses the contribution of mesh adaptation to high‐order convergence of unsteady multi‐fluid flow simulations on complex geometries. The mesh adaptation relies on a metric‐based method controlling the L ^p‐norm of the interpolation error and on a mesh generation algorithm based on an anisotropic Delaunay kernel. The mesh‐adaptive time advancing is achieved, thanks to a transient fixed‐point algorithm to predict the solution evolution coupled with a metric intersection in the time procedure. In the time direction, we enforce the equidistribution of the error, i.e. the error minimization in L ^∞ norm. This adaptive approach is applied to an incompressible Navier–Stokes model combined with a level set formulation discretized on triangular and tetrahedral meshes. Applications to interface flows under gravity are performed to evaluate the performance of this method for this class of discontinuous flows. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mesh association by projection along smoothed‐normal‐vector fields: Association of closed manifolds

The necessity to associate two geometrically distinct meshes arises in many engineering applications. Current mesh‐association algorithms have generally been developed for piecewise‐linear geometry approximations, and their extension to the high‐order geometry representations corresponding to high‐order finite element methods is nontrivial. In the present work, we therefore propose a mesh‐association method for high‐order geometry representations. The associative map defines the image of a point on a mesh as its projection along a so‐called smoothed‐normal‐vector field onto the other mesh. The smoothed‐normal‐vector field is defined by the solution of a modified Helmholtz equation with right‐hand‐side data corresponding to the normal‐vector field. Classical regularity theory conveys that the smoothed‐normal‐vector field is continuously differentiable, which renders it well suited for a projection‐based association. Moreover, the regularity of the smoothed‐normal‐vector field increases with the regularity of the normal‐vector field and, hence, the smoothness of the association increases with the smoothness of the geometry representations. The proposed association method thus accommodates the higher regularity that can be provided by high‐order geometry representations. Several important properties of smoothed‐normal‐projection association are established by analysis and by numerical experiments on closed manifolds. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An extended advancing front technique for closed surfaces mesh generation

An extended advancing front technique (AFT) with shift operations and Riemann metric named as shifting‐AFT is presented for finite element mesh generation on 3D surfaces, especially 3D closed surfaces. Riemann metric is used to govern the size and shape of the triangles in the parametric space. The shift operators are employed to insert a floating space between real space and parametric space during the 2D parametric space mesh generation. In the previous work of closed surface mesh generation, the virtual boundaries are adopted when mapping the closed surfaces into 2D open parametric domains. However, it may cause the mesh quality‐worsening problem. In order to overcome this problem, the AFT kernel is combined with the shift operator in this paper. The shifting‐AFT can generate high‐quality meshes and guarantee convergence in both open and closed surfaces. For the shifting‐AFT, it is not necessary to introduce virtual boundaries while meshing a closed surface; hence, the boundary discretization procedure is largely simplified, and moreover, better‐shaped triangles will be generated because there are no additional interior constraints yielded by virtual boundaries. Comparing with direct methods, the shifting‐AFT avoids costly and unstable 3D geometrical computations in the real space. Some examples presented in this paper have demonstrated the advantages of shift‐AFT in 3D surface mesh generation, especially for the closed surfaces. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quality improvement methods for hexahedral element meshes adaptively generated using grid‐based algorithm

The quality of finite element meshes is one of the key factors that affects the accuracy and reliability of numerical simulation results of many science and engineering problems. In order to solve the problem wherein the surface elements of the mesh generated by the grid‐based method have poor quality, this paper studied mesh quality improvement methods, including node position smoothing and topological optimization. A curvature‐based Laplacian scheme was used for smoothing of nodes on the C‐edges, which combined the normal component with the tangential component of the Laplacian operator at the curved boundary. A projection‐based Laplacian algorithm for smoothing the remaining boundary nodes was established. The deviation of the newly smoothed node from the practical surface of the solid model was solved. A node‐ and area‐weighted combination method was proposed for smoothing of interior nodes. Five element‐inserting modes, three element‐collapsing modes and three mixed modes for topological optimization were newly established. The rules for harmonious application and conformity problem of each mode, especially the mixed mode, were provided. Finally, several examples were given to demonstrate the practicability and validity of the mesh quality improvement methods presented in this paper. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The generation of arbitrary order curved meshes for 3D finite element analysis

A procedure for generating curved meshes, suitable for high-order finite element analysis, is described. The strategy adopted is based upon curving a generated initial mesh with planar edges and faces by using a linear elasticity analogy. The analogy employs boundary loads that ensure that nodes representing curved boundaries lie on the true surface. Several examples, in both two and three dimensions, illustrate the performance of the proposed approach, with the quality of the generated meshes being analysed in terms of a distortion measure. The examples chosen involve geometries of particular interest to the computational fluid dynamics community, including anisotropic meshes for complex three dimensional configurations.     

Coarsening unstructured meshes by edge contraction

A new unstructured mesh coarsening algorithm has been developed for use in conjunction with multilevel methods. The algorithm preserves geometrical and topological features of the domain, and retains a maximal independent set of interior vertices to produce good coarse mesh quality. In anisotropic meshes, vertex selection is designed to retain the structure of the anisotropic mesh while reducing cell aspect ratio. Vertices are removed incrementally by contracting edges to zero length. Each vertex is removed by contracting the edge that maximizes the minimum sine of the dihedral angles of cells affected by the edge contraction. Rarely, a vertex slated for removal from the mesh cannot be removed; the success rate for vertex removal is typically 99.9% or more. For two‐dimensional meshes, both isotropic and anisotropic, the new approach is an unqualified success, removing all rejected vertices and producing output meshes of high quality; mesh quality degrades only when most vertices lie on the boundary. Three‐dimensional isotropic meshes are also coarsened successfully, provided that there is no difficulty distinguishing corners in the geometry from coarsely‐resolved curved surfaces; sophisticated discrete computational geometry techniques appear necessary to make that distinction. Three‐dimensional anisotropic cases are still problematic because of tight constraints on legal mesh connectivity. More work is required to either improve edge contraction choices or to develop an alternative strategy for mesh coarsening for three‐dimensional anisotropic meshes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Q‐Morph: an indirect approach to advancing front quad meshing

Q‐Morph is a new algorithm for generating all‐quadrilateral meshes on bounded three‐dimensional surfaces. After first triangulating the surface, the triangles are systematically transformed to create an all‐quadrilateral mesh. An advancing front algorithm determines the sequence of triangle transformations. Quadrilaterals are formed by using existing edges in the triangulation, by inserting additional nodes, or by performing local transformations to the triangles. A method typically used for recovering the boundary of a Delaunay mesh is used on interior triangles to recover quadrilateral edges. Any number of triangles may be merged to form a single quadrilateral. Topological clean‐up and smoothing are used to improve final element quality. Q‐Morph generates well‐aligned rows of quadrilaterals parallel to the boundary of the domain while maintaining a limited number of irregular internal nodes. The proposed method also offers the advantage of avoiding expensive intersection calculations commonly associated with advancing front procedures. A series of examples of Q‐Morph meshes are also presented to demonstrate the versatility of the proposed method. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.