A Comparison of Tetrahedron Quality Measures

Finite Elements in Analysis and Design, Elsevier, Num 15, pp.255-261, 1993

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

V.N. Parthasarathy
General Electric Consulting Services, Schenectady, NY 12301, USA
C.M. Graichen and A.F. Hathaway
Solid Mechanics Laboratory, General Electric Corporate Research and Development, Schenectady, ATY 12301, USA

Abstract
One of the difficult requirements imposed on fully automatic tetrahedral mesh generators has been the ability to produce "good" quality graded elements. This note is concerned with the choice of a distortion quality measure used in post-meshing activities such as (i) quality evaluation, and (ii) quality improvement of a finite element mesh consisting of a disjoint collection of tetrahedra. In that light it provides (i) a comparison of the fidelity of various existing tetrahedron quality measures to a set of distortion sensitivity tests, and (ii) a comparison of the computational expense of such measures. The topics of mesh generation and mesh quality improvement are not discussed.