Surface Mesh Sizing Control

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, Wiley, Vol 1, Num 47, pp.289-312, 2000

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvannia, U.S.A.
and
Ansys Inc. 275 Technology Drive, Canonsburg, Pennsylvannia, 15317, U.S.A.

Abstract
A method is presented for controlling element sizes on the interior of areas during surface meshing. A Delaunay background mesh is defined over which natural neighbor interpolation, a neighborhood based interpolation scheme, is used to generate a sizing function. The sizing function may be used to interpolate element sizes, anisotropic stretching parameters or other surface characteristics required during meshing. A brief description of natural neighbor interpolation is included and the sizing results obtained from this interpolation method are compared to those obtained using linear interpolation. Three specific applications are presented that utilize the sizing function, namely boundary layer meshing, surface curvature refinement and anisotropic mesh generation. For these applications, criteria used for augmenting the sizing function based on insertion of additional interior vertices into the background mesh are discussed.