Inserting a surface into an existing unstructured mesh

• Published in: International journal for numerical methods in engineering Vol. 106; no. 6; pp. 484 - 500
• Main Authors: Zaide, Daniel W., Ollivier-Gooch, Carl F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bognor Regis Blackwell Publishing Ltd 11.05.2016; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Algorithms; Boundaries; Computer simulation; Discretization; Finite element method; mesh adaptation; Placing; Representations; surface recovery; tetrahedral mesh generation; Three dimensional; unstructured meshes
• ISSN: 0029-5981; 1097-0207
• DOI: 10.1002/nme.5132

Summary In this work, a new method for inserting a surface as an internal boundary into an existing unstructured tetrahedral mesh is developed. The surface is discretized by initially placing vertices on its bounding curves, defining a length scale at every location on each boundary curve based on the local underlying mesh, and equidistributing length scale along these curves between vertices. The surface is then sampled based on this boundary discretization, resulting in a surface mesh spaced in a way that is consistent with the initial mesh. The new points are then inserted into the mesh, and local refinement is performed, resulting in a final mesh containing a representation of the surface while preserving mesh quality. The advantage of this algorithm over generating a new mesh from scratch is in allowing for the majority of existing simulation data to be preserved and not have to be interpolated onto the new mesh. This algorithm is demonstrated in two and three dimensions on problems with and without intersections with existing internal boundaries. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.