THE WHISKER WEAVING ALGORITHM: A CONNECTIVITY-BASED METHOD FOR CONSTRUCTING ALL-HEXAHEDRAL FINITE ELEMENT MESHES

This paper introduces a new algorithm called whisker weaving for constructing unstructured, all-hexahedral finite element meshes. Whisker weaving is based on the Spatial Twist Continuum (STC), a global interpretation of the geometric dual of an all-hexahedral mesh. Whisker weaving begins with a closed, all-quadrilateral surface mesh bounding a solid geometry, then constructs hexahedral element connectivity advancing into the solid. The result of the whisker weaving algorithm is a complete representation of hex mesh connectivity only: Actual mesh node locations are determined afterwards. The basic step of whisker weaving is to form a hexahedral element by crossing or intersecting dual entities. This operation, combined with seaming or joining operations in dual space, is sufficient to mesh simple block problems. When meshing more complex geometries, certain other dual entities appear such as blind chords, merged sheets, and self-intersecting chords. Occasionally specific types of invalid connectivity arise. These are detected by a general method based on repeated STC edges. This leads into a strategy for resolving some cases of invalidities immediately. The whisker weaving implementation has so far been successful at generating meshes for simple block-type geometries and for some non-block geometries. Mesh sizes are currently limited to a few hundred elements. While the size and complexity of meshes generated by whisker weaving are currently limited, the algorithm shows promise for extension to much more general problems.     

The generation of hexahedral meshes for assembly geometry: survey and progress

The finite element method is being used today to model component assemblies in a wide variety of application areas, including structural mechanics, fluid simulations, and others. Generating hexahedral meshes for these assemblies usually requires the use of geometry decomposition, with different meshing algorithms applied to different regions. While the primary motivation for this approach remains the lack of an automatic, reliable all‐hexahedral meshing algorithm, requirements in mesh quality and mesh configuration for typical analyses are also factors. For these reasons, this approach is also sometimes required when producing other types of unstructured meshes. This paper will review progress to date in automating many parts of the hex meshing process, which has halved the time to produce all‐hex meshes for large assemblies. Particular issues which have been exposed due to this progress will also be discussed, along with their applicability to the general unstructured meshing problem. Published in 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

LayTracks: a new approach to automated geometry adaptive quadrilateral mesh generation using medial axis transform

A new mesh generation algorithm called ‘LayTracks’, to automatically generate an all quad mesh that is adapted to the variation of geometric feature size in the domain is described. LayTracks combines the merits of two popular direct techniques for quadrilateral mesh generation—quad meshing by decomposition and advancing front quad meshing. While the MAT has been used for the domain decomposition before, this is the first attempt to use the MAT, for the robust subdivision of a complex domain into a well defined sub‐domain called ‘Tracks’, for terminating the advancing front of the mesh elements without complex interference checks and to use radius function for providing sizing function for adaptive meshing. The process of subdivision of a domain is analogous to, formation of railway tracks by laying rails on the ground. Each rail starts from a node on the boundary and propagates towards the medial axis (MA) and then from the MA towards the boundary. Quadrilateral elements are then obtained by placing nodes on these rails and connecting them inside each track, formed by adjacent rails. The algorithm has been implemented and tested on some typical geometries and the quality of the output mesh obtained are presented. Extension of this technique to all hexahedral meshing is discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A suitable low‐order,tetrahedral finite element for solids

To use the all‐tetrahedral mesh generation capabilities existing today, we have explored the creation of a computationally efficient eight‐node tetrahedral finite element (a four‐node tetrahedral finite element enriched with four mid‐face nodal points). The derivation of the element's gradient operator, studies in obtaining a suitable mass lumping and the element's performance in applications are presented. In particular, we examine the eight‐node tetrahedral finite element's behavior in longitudinal plane wave propagation, in transverse cylindrical wave propagation, and in simulating Taylor bar impacts. The element samples only constant strain states and, therefore, has 12 hourglass modes. In this regard, it bears similarities to the eight‐node, mean‐quadrature hexahedral finite element. Comparisons with the results obtained from the mean‐quadrature eight‐node hexahedral finite element and the four‐node tetrahedral finite element are included. Given automatic all‐tetrahedral meshing, the eight‐node, mean‐quadrature tetrahedral finite element is a suitable replacement for the eight‐node, mean‐quadrature hexahedral finite element and meshes requiring an inordinate amount of user intervention and direction to generate. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This paper was produced under the auspices of the U.S. Government and it is therefore not subject to copyright in the U.S.     

Clustered generalized finite element methods for mesh unrefinement,non‐matching and invalid meshes

In spite of significant advancements in automatic mesh generation during the past decade, the construction of quality finite element discretizations on complex three‐dimensional domains is still a difficult and time demanding task. In this paper, the partition of unity framework used in the generalized finite element method (GFEM) is exploited to create a very robust and flexible method capable of using meshes that are unacceptable for the finite element method, while retaining its accuracy and computational efficiency. This is accomplished not by changing the mesh but instead by clustering groups of nodes and elements. The clusters define a modified finite element partition of unity that is constant over part of the clusters. This so‐called clustered partition of unity is then enriched to the desired order using the framework of the GFEM. The proposed generalized finite element method can correctly and efficiently deal with: (i) elements with negative Jacobian; (ii) excessively fine meshes created by automatic mesh generators; (iii) meshes consisting of several sub‐domains with non‐matching interfaces. Under such relaxed requirements for an acceptable mesh, and for correctly defined geometries, today's automated tetrahedral mesh generators can practically guarantee successful volume meshing that can be entirely hidden from the user. A detailed technical discussion of the proposed generalized finite element method with clustering along with numerical experiments and some implementation details are presented. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quality improvement of non‐manifold hexahedral meshes for critical feature determination of microstructure materials

This paper describes a novel approach to improve the quality of non‐manifold hexahedral meshes with feature preservation for microstructure materials. In earlier works, we developed an octree‐based isocontouring method to construct unstructured hexahedral meshes for domains with multiple materials by introducing the notion of material change edge to identify the interface between two or more materials. However, quality improvement of non‐manifold hexahedral meshes is still a challenge. In the present algorithm, all the vertices are categorized into seven groups, and then a comprehensive method based on pillowing, geometric flow and optimization techniques is developed for mesh quality improvement. The shrink set in the modified pillowing technique is defined automatically as the boundary of each material region with the exception of local non‐manifolds. In the relaxation‐based smoothing process, non‐manifold points are identified and fixed. Planar boundary curves and interior spatial curves are distinguished, and then regularized using B‐spline interpolation and resampling. Grain boundary surface patches and interior vertices are improved as well. Finally, the optimization method eliminates negative Jacobians of all the vertices. We have applied our algorithms to two beta titanium data sets, and the constructed meshes are validated via a statistics study. Finite element analysis of the 92‐grain titanium is carried out based on the improved mesh, and compared with the direct voxel‐to‐element technique. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

All‐hexahedral element meshing: automatic elimination of self‐intersecting dual lines

There has been some degree of success in all‐hexahedral meshing. Standard methods start with the object geometry defined by means of an all‐quadrilateral mesh, followed by the use of the combinatorial dual to the mesh in order to define the internal connectivities among elements. For all of the known methods using the dual concept, it is necessary to first prevent or eliminate self‐intersecting (SI) dual lines of the given quadrilateral mesh. The relevant features of SI lines are studied, giving a method to remove them, which avoids deforming the original geometry. Some examples of resulting meshes are shown where the current meshing method has been successfully applied. Copyright © 2002 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.     

Node placement for triangular mesh generation by Monte Carlo simulation

A new approach of node placement for unstructured mesh generation is proposed. It is based on the Monte Carlo method to position nodes for triangular or tetrahedral meshes. Surface or volume geometries to be meshed are treated as atomic systems, and mesh nodes are considered as interacting particles. By minimizing system potential energy with Monte Carlo simulation, particles are placed into a near‐optimal configuration. Well‐shaped triangles or tetrahedra can then be created after connecting the nodes by constrained Delaunay triangulation or tetrahedrization. The algorithm is simple, easy to implement, and works in an almost identical way for 2D and 3D meshing. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Generalised Voronoi tessellation for generating microstructural finite element models with controllable grain‐size distributions and grain aspect ratios

A generalised Voronoi tessellation is proposed to create three‐dimensional microstructural finite element model, which can effectively reproduce the grain size distribution and grain aspect ratio obtained from experiments. This new approach consists of two steps. The first step generates the desired lognormal grain size distribution with a given average grain volume and standard deviation. The second step requires grouping meshed elements to create a specific grain aspect ratio, using the Voronoi generators from the first step. A new concept is introduced to describe the transition from the Poisson–Voronoi tessellation to the centroidal Voronoi tessellation. More importantly, instead of using the conventional way where the Voronoi cells are first generated and then meshed into finite elements, this new approach discretises the pre‐meshed specimen with the Voronoi generators. This new technique prevents the presence of high density mesh at the vertices of Voronoi cells, and can tessellate irregular geometry much more easily. Examples of microstructures with different size distributions, non‐equiaxed grains and complicated specimen geometries further demonstrate that the proposed approach can offer great flexibility to model various specimen geometries while keeping the process simple and efficient. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Achieving finite element mesh quality via optimization of the Jacobian matrix norm and associated quantities. Part II—A framework for volume mesh optimization and the condition number of the Jacobian matrix

Three‐dimensional unstructured tetrahedral and hexahedral finite element mesh optimization is studied from a theoretical perspective and by computer experiments to determine what objective functions are most effective in attaining valid, high‐quality meshes. The approach uses matrices and matrix norms to extend the work in Part I to build suitable 3D objective functions. Because certain matrix norm identities which hold for 2×2 matrices do not hold for 3×3 matrices, significant differences arise between surface and volume mesh optimization objective functions. It is shown, for example, that the equality in two dimensions of the smoothness and condition number of the Jacobian matrix objective functions does not extend to three dimensions and further, that the equality of the Oddy and condition number of the metric tensor objective functions in two dimensions also fails to extend to three dimensions. Matrix norm identities are used to systematically construct dimensionally homogeneous groups of objective functions. The concept of an ideal minimizing matrix is introduced for both hexahedral and tetrahedral elements. Non‐dimensional objective functions having barriers are emphasized as the most logical choice for mesh optimization. The performance of a number of objective functions in improving mesh quality was assessed on a suite of realistic test problems, focusing particularly on all‐hexahedral ‘whisker‐weaved’ meshes. Performance is investigated on both structured and unstructured meshes and on both hexahedral and tetrahedral meshes. Although several objective functions are competitive, the condition number objective function is particularly attractive. The objective functions are closely related to mesh quality measures. To illustrate, it is shown that the condition number metric can be viewed as a new tetrahedral element quality measure. Published in 2000 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hierarchical tree‐based finite element mesh generation

Hierarchical grid generation and its use as a basis for finite element mesh generation are considered in this paper. The hierarchical grids are generated by recursive subdivision using quadtrees in two dimensions and octrees in three dimensions. A numbering system for efficient storage of the quadtree grid information is examined, tree traversal techniques are devised for neighbour finding, and accurate boundary representation is considered. It is found that hierarchical grids are straightforward to generate from sets of seeding points which lie along domain boundaries. Quadtree grids are triangularized to provide finite element meshes in two dimensions. Three‐dimensional tetrahedral meshes are generated from octree grids. The meshes can be generated automatically to model complicated geometries with highly irregular boundaries and can be adapted readily at moving boundaries. Examples are given of two‐ and three‐dimensional hierarchical tree‐based finite element meshes and their application to modelling free surface waves. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mesh‐independent p‐orthotropic enrichment using the generalized finite element method

This paper is aimed at presenting a simple yet effective procedure to implement a mesh‐independent p‐orthotropic enrichment in the generalized finite element method. The procedure is based on the observation that shape functions used in the GFEM can be constructed from polynomials defined in any co‐ordinate system regardless of the underlying mesh or type of element used. Numerical examples where the solution possesses boundary or internal layers are solved on coarse tetrahedral meshes with isotropic and the proposed p‐orthotropic enrichment. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The generation of triangular meshes for NURBS‐enhanced FEM

This paper presents the first method that enables the fully automatic generation of triangular meshes suitable for the so‐called non‐uniform rational B‐spline (NURBS)‐enhanced finite element method (NEFEM). The meshes generated with the proposed approach account for the computer‐aided design boundary representation of the domain given by NURBS curves. The characteristic element size is completely independent of the geometric complexity and of the presence of very small geometric features. The proposed strategy allows to circumvent the time‐consuming process of de‐featuring complex geometric models before a finite element mesh suitable for the analysis can be produced. A generalisation of the original definition of a NEFEM element is also proposed, enabling to treat more complicated elements with an edge defined by several NURBS curves or more than one edge defined by different NURBS. Three examples of increasing difficulty demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach and illustrate the advantages compared with those of traditional finite element mesh generators. Finally, a simulation of an electromagnetic scattering problem is considered to show the applicability of the generated meshes for finite element analysis. ©2016 The Authors. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

Automatic generation of transitional meshes

Advances in commercial computer‐aided design software have made finite element analysis with three‐dimensional solid finite elements routinely available. Since these analyses usually confine themselves to those geometrical objects for which particular CAD systems can produce finite element meshes, expanding the capability of analyses becomes an issue of expanding the capability of generating meshes. This paper presents a method for stitching together two three‐dimensional meshes with diverse elements that can include tetrahedral, pentahedral and hexahedral solid finite elements. The stitching produces a mesh that coincides with the edges which already exist on the portion of boundaries that will be joined. Moreover, the transitional mesh does not introduce new edges on these boundaries. Since the boundaries of the regions to be stitched together can have a mixture of triangles and quadrilaterals, tetrahedral and pyramidal elements provide the transitional elements required to honor these constraints. On these boundaries a pyramidal element shares its base face with the quadrilateral faces of hexahedra and pentahedra. Tetrahedral elements share a face with the triangles on the boundary. Tetrahedra populate the remaining interior of the transitional region. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hexahedral mesh generation by medial surface subdivision: Part I. Solids with convex edges

A method is presented for subdividing a large class of solid objects into topologically simple subregions suitable for automatic finite element meshing with hexahedral elements. The technique uses a geometric property of a solid, its medial surface, to define the necessary subregions. The subregions are defined explicitly to be one of only 13 possible types. The subdividing cuts are between parts of the object in geometric proximity and produce good quality meshes of hexahedral elements. The method as introduced here is applicable to solids with convex edges and vertices, but the extension to complete generality is feasible.     

Robust generation of high‐quality unstructured meshes on realistic biomedical geometry

In this paper, we propose efficient and robust unstructured mesh generation methods based on computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, in order to obtain a patient‐specific geometry for high‐fidelity numerical simulations. Surface extraction from medical images is carried out mainly using open source libraries, including the Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit and the Visualization Toolkit, into the form of facet surface representation. To create high‐quality surface meshes, we propose two approaches. One is a direct advancing front method, and the other is a modified decimation method. The former emphasizes the controllability of local mesh density, and the latter enables semi‐automated mesh generation from low‐quality discrete surfaces. An advancing‐front‐based volume meshing method is employed. Our approaches are demonstrated with high‐fidelity tetrahedral meshes around medical geometries extracted from CT/MRI data. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Automatic quadrilateral/triangular free-form mesh generation for planar regions

Automation of finite element mesh generation holds great benefits for mechanical product development and analysis. In addition to freeing engineers from mundane tasks, automation of mesh generation reduces product cycle design and eliminates human-related errors. Most of the existing mesh generation methods are either semi-automatic or require specific topological information. A fully automatic free-form mesh generation method is described in this paper to alleviate some of these problems. The method is capable of meshing singly or multiply connected convex/concave planar regions. These regions can be viewed as crosssectional areas of 2 1/2 D objects analysed as plane stress, plane strain or axisymmetric stress problems. In addition to being fully automatic, the method produces quadrilateral or triangular elements with aspect rations near one. Moreover, it does not require any topological constraints on the regions to be meshed; i.e. it provides free-form mesh generation. The input to the method includes the region's boundary curves, the element size and the mesh grading information. The method begins by decomposing the planar region to be meshed into convex subregions. Each subregion is meshed by first generating nodes on its boundaries using the input element size. The boundary nodes are then offset to mesh the subregion. The resulting meshes are merged together to form the final mesh. The paper describes the method in detail, algorithms developed to implement it and sample numerical examples. Results on parametric studies of the method performance are also discussed.     

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.