Meeting the Challenge for Automated Conformal Hexahedral Meshing

Proceedings, 9th International Meshing Roundtable, Sandia National Laboratories, pp.11-19, October 2000

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Ted Blacker
Fluent, lnc., 500 Davis St. Suite 600, Evanston, IL, U.S.A.
Email: ted@fluent.com

Invited Speaker
One of the original founders of the Sandia CUBIT meshing research group and the International Meshing Roundtable, Dr. Blacker has been an active researcher in mesh generation for many years. He developed the paving algorithm for quadrilateral meshing and has made significant contributions with various hexahedral meshing algorithms. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1983 with a Masters in Civil Engineering, and later obtained a Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Northwestern University. He is currently employed by Fluent and is responsible for the Gambit software product, a preprocessor tool for geometry and mesh generation for the Fluent suite of analysis tools. Dr. Blacker will speak about hexahedral mesh generation; its history, the state of the art, and some musings about the future of this research area with a particular emphasis on the practical application of the various techniques.

Abstract
Automated hexahedral element meshing has been the "Holy Grail" of mesh generation research for years. The rigid connectivity and shape constraints of these meshes provide the challenge. The ever-present economic pressure for automating meshing of complex geometries, difficult transitions and large mesh sizes establishes the opportunity. This paper will systematically review the requirements of the hexahedral meshing challenge, the various approaches to the solution of the problem (along with their respective attributes), and some musings about future research opportunities.

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