Automatic generation of anisotropic quadrilateral meshes on three-dimensional surfaces using metric specifications

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Vol 53, Num 12, pp.2673 - 2700, April 2002

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Abstract

A new algorithm for constructing full quadrilateral anisotropic meshes on 3D surfaces is proposed in this paper. The proposed method is based on the advancing front and the systemic merging techniques. Full quadrilateral meshes are constructed by systemically converting triangular elements in the background meshes into quadrilateral elements.By using the metric specifications to describe the element characteristics, the proposed algorithm is applicable to convert both isotropic and anisotropic triangular meshes into full quadrilateral meshes. Special techniques for generating anisotropic quadrilaterals such as new selection criteria of base segment for merging, new approaches for the modifications of the background mesh and construction of quadrilateral elements, are investigated andproposed in this study. Since the final quadrilateral mesh is constructed from a background triangular mesh and the merging procedure is carried out in the parametric space, the mesh generator is robust and no expensive geometrical computation that is commonly associated with direct quadrilateral mesh generation schemes is needed.