Investigation of Hexahedral Elements Generated from Tetrahedral Elements
Li, Ge; Jayaseelan, Rajanikanth; Gerstle, Walter
Numerical Grid Generation in Computational Field Simulations, The International Society of Grid Generation, pp.315-323, September 2000
Department of Civil Engineering
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
email: lige@unm.edu, rajani@unm.edu, gerstle@unm.edu
Abstract
Many finite element programs make use exclusively of quadrilateral and hexahedral elements, because of the superior behavior of such elements compared with simplex elements of triangular and tetrahedral shape. Therefore, much research has been directed toward the automatic generation of unstructured meshes of quadrilateral and hexahedral elements. In this paper we investigate the behavior of meshes of hexahedral elements generated from meshes of tetrahedral elements. The results show that such meshes, despite consisting of hexahedral elements with relatively poor aspect ratios, perform competitively when compared to meshes of simplex elements, although not as well as structured meshes of hexahedral elements with perfect aspect ratios. We conclude that hexahedral elements generated from tetrahedral elements are reasonable for practical analysis.
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