Hexahedral Mesh Untangling & Algebraic Mesh Quality Metrics

Proceedings, 9th International Meshing Roundtable, Sandia National Laboratories, pp.173-183, October 2000

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Patrick M. Knupp
Parallel Computing Sciences Department
Sandia National Laboratories
M/S 0847, P.O. Box 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0847
Email: pknupp@sandia.gov

Abstract
We investigate a new, well-motivated mesh untangling objective function whose optimization produces non-inverted elements on simplicial meshes. The objective function is also effective on many non-simplicial (e.g., hexahedral) meshes. The current whisker-weaving (WW) algorithm in CUBIT usually produces hexahedral meshes that are unsuitable for analyses due to inverted elements. The majority of these meshes cannot be untangled using the new objective function. The difficulty may be due to the untangling objective function (non-convexity), the optimization procedure, or to poor mesh topology (or all three). Further work on this problem is needed.

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