A new finite point generation scheme using metric specifications

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Vol 48, Num 10, pp.1423 - 1444, August 2000

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Abstract

A new approach to generate finite point meshes on 2D flat surface and any bi-variate parametric surfaces is suggested. It can be used to generate boundary-conforming anisotropic point meshes with node spacing compatible with the metric specifications defined in a background point mesh. In contrast to many automatic mesh generation schemes, the advancing front concept is abandoned in the present method. A few simple basic operations including boundary offsetting, node insertion and node deletion are used instead. The point mesh generation schemeis initialized by a boundary offsetting procedure. The point mesh quality is then improved by node insertion and deletion such that optimally spaced nodes will fill up the entire problem domain. In addition to the point mesh generation scheme, a new way to define the connectivity of a point mesh is also suggested. Furthermore, based on the connectivity information, a new scheme to perform smoothing for a point mesh is proposed toimprove the node spacing quality of the mesh. Timing shows thatdue to the simple node insertion and deletion operations, the generation speed of the new scheme is nearly 10 times faster than a similar advancing front mesh generator.