Tetrahedral mesh generation using Delaunay refinement with non‐standard quality measures

This paper studies the practical performance of Delaunay refinement tetrahedral mesh generation algorithms. By using non‐standard quality measures to drive refinement, we show that sliver tetrahedra can be eliminated from constrained Delaunay tetrahedralizations solely by refinement. Despite the fact that quality guarantees cannot be proven, the algorithm can consistently generate meshes with dihedral angles between 18^circ and 154^°. Using a fairer quality measure targeting every type of bad tetrahedron, dihedral angles between 14^° and 154^° can be obtained. The number of vertices inserted to achieve quality meshes is comparable to that needed when driving refinement with the standard circumradius‐to‐shortest‐edge ratio. We also study the use of mesh improvement techniques on Delaunay refined meshes and observe that the minimum dihedral angle can generally be pushed above 20^°, regardless of the quality measure used to drive refinement. The algorithm presented in this paper can accept geometric domains whose boundaries are piecewise smooth. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Three‐dimensional superconvergent gradient recovery on tetrahedral meshes

In this paper, finite element superconvergence phenomenon based on centroidal Voronoi Delaunay tessellations (CVDT) in three‐dimensional space is investigated. The Laplacian operator with the Dirichlet boundary condition is considered. A modified superconvergence patch recovery (MSPR) method is established to overcome the influence of slivers on CVDT meshes. With these two key preconditions, a CVDT mesh and the MSPR, the gradients recovered from the linear finite element solutions have superconvergence in the l₂ norm at nodes of a CVDT mesh for an arbitrary three‐dimensional bounded domain. Numerous numerical examples are presented to demonstrate this superconvergence property and good performance of the MSPR method. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive tetrahedral mesh generation by constrained Delaunay refinement

This paper presents a tetrahedral mesh generation method for numerically solving partial differential equations using finite element or finite volume methods in three‐dimensional space. The main issues are the mesh quality and mesh size, which directly affect the accuracy of the numerical solution and the computational cost. Two basic problems need to be resolved, namely boundary conformity and field points distribution. The proposed method utilizes a special three‐dimensional triangulation, so‐called constrained Delaunay tetrahedralization to conform the domain boundary and create field points simultaneously. Good quality tetrahedra and graded mesh size can be theoretically guaranteed for a large class of mesh domains. In addition, an isotropic size field associated with the numerical solution can be supplied; the field points will then be distributed according to it. Good mesh size conformity can be achieved for smooth sizing informations. The proposed method has been implemented. Various examples are provided to illustrate its theoretical aspects as well as practical performance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Automatic sizing functions for unstructured surface mesh generation

Accurate sizing functions are crucial for efficient generation of high‐quality meshes, but to define the sizing function is often the bottleneck in complicated mesh generation tasks because of the tedious user interaction involved. We present a novel algorithm to automatically create high‐quality sizing functions for surface mesh generation. First, the tessellation of a Computer Aided Design (CAD) model is taken as the background mesh, in which an initial sizing function is defined by considering geometrical factors and user‐specified parameters. Then, a convex nonlinear programming problem is formulated and solved efficiently to obtain a smoothed sizing function that corresponds to a mesh satisfying necessary gradient constraint conditions and containing a significantly reduced element number. Finally, this sizing function is applied in an advancing front mesher. With the aid of a walk‐through algorithm, an efficient sizing‐value query scheme is developed. Meshing experiments of some very complicated geometry models are presented to demonstrate that the proposed sizing‐function approach enables accurate and fully automatic surface mesh generation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An indirect approach for automatic generation of quadrilateral meshes with arbitrary line constraints

A new approach to the automatic generation of a quadrilateral mesh with arbitrary line constraints is proposed in this paper. It is an indirect all‐quad mesh generation and presented in the following steps: (1) discretizing the constrained lines within the domain; (2) converting the above domain to a triangular mesh together with the line constraints; (3) transforming the generated triangular mesh with line constraints to an all‐quad mesh through performing an advancing front algorithm from the line constraints, which enables the construction of quadrilaterals layer by layer, and roughly keeps the feature of the initial triangular mesh; (4) optimizing the topology of the quadrilateral mesh to reduce the number of irregular nodes; (5) smoothing the generated mesh toward high‐quality all‐quad mesh generation. Finally, a few application examples are given to demonstrate the reliability and usefulness of the proposed algorithm. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A multiobjective mesh optimization framework for mesh quality improvement and mesh untangling

We propose a multiobjective mesh optimization framework for mesh quality improvement and mesh untangling. Our framework combines two or more competing objective functions into a single objective function to be solved using one of various multiobjective optimization methods. Methods within our framework are able to optimize various aspects of the mesh such as the element shape, element size, associated PDE interpolation error, and number of inverted elements, but the improvement is not limited to these categories. The strength of our multiobjective mesh optimization framework lies in its ability to be extended to simultaneously optimize any aspects of the mesh and to optimize meshes with different element types. We propose the exponential sum, objective product, and equal sum multiobjective mesh optimization methods within our framework; these methods do not require articulation of preferences. However, the solutions obtained satisfy a sufficient condition of weak Pareto optimality. Experimental results show that our multiobjective mesh optimization methods are able to simultaneously optimize two or more aspects of the mesh and also are able to improve mesh qualities while eliminating inverted elements. We successfully apply our methods to real‐world applications such as hydrocephalus treatment and shape optimization. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tetrahedral mesh improvement via optimization of the element condition number

We present a new shape measure for tetrahedral elements that is optimal in that it gives the distance of a tetrahedron from the set of inverted elements. This measure is constructed from the condition number of the linear transformation between a unit equilateral tetrahedron and any tetrahedron with positive volume. Using this shape measure, we formulate two optimization objective functions that are differentiated by their goal: the first seeks to improve the average quality of the tetrahedral mesh; the second aims to improve the worst‐quality element in the mesh. We review the optimization techniques used with each objective function and present experimental results that demonstrate the effectiveness of the mesh improvement methods. We show that a combined optimization approach that uses both objective functions obtains the best‐quality meshes for several complex geometries. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

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.     

3D boundary recovery by constrained Delaunay tetrahedralization

Three‐dimensional boundary recovery is a fundamental problem in mesh generation. In this paper, we propose a practical algorithm for solving this problem. Our algorithm is based on the construction of a constrained Delaunay tetrahedralization (CDT) for a set of constraints (segments and facets). The algorithm adds additional points (so‐called Steiner points) on segments only. The Steiner points are chosen in such a way that the resulting subsegments are Delaunay and their lengths are not unnecessarily short. It is theoretically guaranteed that the facets can be recovered without using Steiner points. The complexity of this algorithm is analyzed. The proposed algorithm has been implemented. Its performance is reported through various application examples. Copyright © 2010 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.     

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.     

二维任意域约束Delaunay三角化的实现

本文设计了一种逐点加入一局部换边法,提出并证明了二维约束边在约束Ｄｅｌａｕｎａｙ三角化中存在的条件,并据此用中点加点法实现了二维任意域的Ｄｅｌａｕｎａｙ三角剖分,生成的网格均符合Ｄｅｌａｕｎａｙ优化准则,网格的优化在网格生成过程中完成,算法复杂度与点数呈近似线性关系,给出了算法在平面域剖分和包含复杂断层的石油地质勘探散乱数据点集剖分的应用实例。     

Achieving finite element mesh quality via optimization of the Jacobian matrix norm and associated quantities. Part I—a framework for surface mesh optimization

Structured mesh quality optimization methods are extended to optimization of unstructured triangular, quadrilateral, and mixed finite element meshes. New interpretations of well‐known nodally based objective functions are made possible using matrices and matrix norms. The matrix perspective also suggests several new objective functions. Particularly significant is the interpretation of the Oddy metric and the smoothness objective functions in terms of the condition number of the metric tensor and Jacobian matrix, respectively. Objective functions are grouped according to dimensionality to form weighted combinations. A simple unconstrained local optimum is computed using a modified Newton iteration. The optimization approach was implemented in the CUBIT mesh generation code and tested on several problems. Results were compared against several standard element‐based quality measures to demonstrate that good mesh quality can be achieved with nodally based objective functions. Published in 2000 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards automatic structured multiblock mesh generation using improved transfinite interpolation

The quality of any numerical flowfield solution is inextricably linked to the quality of the mesh used. It is normally accepted that structured meshes are of higher quality than unstructured meshes, but are much more difficult to generate and, furthermore, for complex topologies a multiblock approach is required. This is the most resource‐intensive approach to mesh generation, since block structures, mesh point distributions, etc., need to be defined before the generation process, and so is seldom used in an industrial design loop, particularly where a novice user may be involved. This paper considers and presents two significant advances in multiblock mesh generation: the development of a fast, robust, and improved quality interpolation‐based generation scheme and a fully automatic multiblock optimization and generation method. A volume generation technique is presented based on a form of transfinite interpolation, but modified to include improved orthogonality and spacing control and, more significantly, an aspect ratio‐based smoothing algorithm that removes grid crossover and results in smooth meshes even for discontinuous boundary distributions. A fully automatic multiblock generation scheme is also presented, which only requires surface patch(es) and a target number of mesh cells. Hence, all user input is removed from the process, and a novice user is able to obtain a high‐quality mesh in a few minutes. It also means the code can be run in batch mode, or called as an external function, and so is ideal for incorporation into a design or optimization loop. To demonstrate the power and efficiency of the code, multiblock meshes of up to 256 million cells are presented for wings and rotors in hover and forward flight. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

One machine,one minute,three billion tetrahedra

This paper presents a new scalable parallelization scheme to generate the 3D Delaunay triangulation of a given set of points. Our first contribution is an efficient serial implementation of the incremental Delaunay insertion algorithm. A simple dedicated data structure, an efficient sorting of the points, and the optimization of the insertion algorithm have permitted to accelerate reference implementations by a factor three. Our second contribution is a multithreaded version of the Delaunay kernel that is able to concurrently insert vertices. Moore curve coordinates are used to partition the point set, avoiding heavy synchronization overheads. Conflicts are managed by modifying the partitions with a simple rescaling of the space-filling curve. The performances of our implementation have been measured on three different processors: an Intel core-i7, an Intel Xeon Phi, and an AMD EPYC, on which we have been able to compute three billion tetrahedra in 53 seconds. This corresponds to a generation rate of over 55 million tetrahedra per second. We finally show how this very efficient parallel Delaunay triangulation can be integrated in a Delaunay refinement mesh generator, which takes as input the triangulated surface boundary of the volume to mesh.     

Tetrahedral mesh generation based on advancing front technique and optimization scheme

In recent years, demand for three‐dimensional simulations has continued to grow in the field of computer‐aided engineering. Especially, in the analysis of forming processes a fully automatic and robust mesh generator is necessary for handling complex geometries used in industry. For three‐dimensional analyses, tetrahedral elements are commonly used due to the advantage in dealing with such geometries. In this study, the advancing front technique has been implemented and modified using an optimization scheme. In this optimization scheme, the distortion metric determines ‘when and where’ to smooth, and serves as an objective function. As a result, the performance of the advancing front technique is improved in terms of mesh quality generated. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tetrahedral mesh generation based on space indicator functions

An algorithm for the generation of tetrahedral volume meshes is developed for highly irregular objects specified by volumetric representations such as domain indicator functions and tomography data. It is based on red–green refinement of an initial mesh derived from a body‐centered cubic lattice. A quantitative comparison of alternative types of initial meshes is presented. The minimum set of best‐quality green refinement schemes is identified. Boundary conformity is established by deforming or splitting surface‐crossing elements. Numerical derivatives of input data are strictly avoided. Furthermore, the algorithm features surface‐adaptive mesh density based on local surface roughness, which is an integral property of finite surface portions. Examples of applications are presented for computer tomography of porous media. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A finite point method for compressible flow

A weighted least squares finite point method for compressible flow is formulated. Starting from a global cloud of points, local clouds are constructed using a Delaunay technique with a series of tests for the quality of the resulting approximations. The approximation factors for the gradient and the Laplacian of the resulting local clouds are used to derive an edge‐based solver that works with approximate Riemann solvers. The results obtained show accuracy comparable to equivalent mesh‐based finite volume or finite element techniques, making the present finite point method competitive. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.