Automated hexahedral mesh generation by generalized multiple source to multiple target sweeping

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, John Wiley, Vol 49, Num 1, pp.261-275, September 10-20 2000

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Special Edition on Unstructured Mesh Generation
International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, Vol 49 Number 1-2, 10-20 September 2000

Correspondence to: Steven Benzley, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 89604, U.S.A.
E-mail: seb@byu.edu

Abstract
This paper presents an enhanced sweeping mesh generation algorithm. Traditional sweeping techniques create all hexahedral element meshes by projecting an existing single-surface mesh along a specified trajectory to a specified single target surface. The work reported here enhances the traditional method by creating all hexahedral element meshes between multiple source surfaces and multiple target surfaces. The new algorithm is based on an innovated application of Boolean operations. The core of this process is the rebuilding of the boundary representations of source surfaces by Boolean operations between the boundary loops of both target and source to incorporate a virtual geometry decomposition.