Unstructured 20-Node Brick Element Meshing

Proceedings, 8th International Meshing Roundtable, South Lake Tahoe, CA, U.S.A., pp.369-376, October 1999

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Abstract
A new method is presented to generate an unstructured 20-node brick element mesh for arbitrary structures. Based on a triangulation of the structure's surface, a 20-node master mesh is generated encompassing the structure. The elements intersected by the triangulation are determined, catalogued, cut and remeshed according to their cutting topology. The new elements external to the structure are discarded, while the others are tied to the uncut subsurface mesh by means of multiple point constraints (MPG's). Alternatively, the remeshing procedure can be continued into the subsurface element layers to obtain a pure 20-node brick element mesh, without any MPC's. Additional smoothing further improves the mesh quality.

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