Element Quality in Tetrahedral Meshes

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Finite Element Methods in Flow Problems, pp.1018-1024, April 1989

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Princeton University, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton, NJ 08544

Abstract
Badly shaped tetrahedral elements are classified into three types depending on geometric characteristics such as edge length, in-radius and circumradius. The first type will not arise if the points are distributed in a reasonably uniform way. Under the same assumption, the second type of badly shaped element will not occur if mesh generation is based on the Delaunay triangulation. The third type can be detected and removed in a straight-forward manner, leaving a tetrahedral mesh composed of well-shaped elements.