Pyramid Elements for Maintaining Tetrahedra to Hexahedra Conformability

AMD-Vol. 220 Trends in Unstructured Mesh Generation, ASME, pp.123-129, July 1997

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University and
ANSYS Inc. 275 Technology Drive. Cannonsburg PA. USA 15317 steve.owen@ansys.com

presented at
The 1997 Joint ASME/ASCE/SES Summer Meeting
June 29-July 2, 1997
Northwestern University
Evanston Illinois

Abstract
A method is proposed whereby an existing non-conforming, mixed hexahedra-tetrahedra element mesh, is altered to conform by the insertion and formation of five-node or thirteen-node pyramids. Local tetrahedral transformations are performed to provide the topology enabling the merging of two adjacent tetrahedra into one pyramid. Local smoothing and cleanup operations improve the quality of the transition region. Other methods for the creation of transition pyramid elements are also discussed. Results show superior performance of the resulting elements in a commercial finite element code over non-conforming interface conditions.

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