Adaptation of CAD surface meshes to a map of sizes through the IGATOMM concept

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, John Wiley, Vol 49, Num 1, pp.313-327, 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: Frederic Noel, Laboratoire des Sols Solides Structures, Universite Joseph Fourier UFR Mecanique, Domaine University, B.P. No. 53, 38041 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
E-mail: Frederic.Noel@hmg.inpg.fr

Abstract
This paper shows a strategy to manage free-form surface meshes according to a distribution of expected sizes, called map of sizes. Adaptation operators are proposed but generation of mesh is not considered in this work. The main purpose is to deliver some tools able to adapt meshes related to free-form surfaces issued from CAD software. It means that the surface is defined by a collection of connected trimmed patches. To obtain patch independent meshes, we define the IGATOMM concept for direct manipulation of either the topology or geometry of the mesh. We introduce a simple strategy, based on the basic operators of IGATOMM, which adjusts the mesh up to the expected distribution of face sizes.