An Algorithm to Generate Qudrilateral or Triangular Element Surface Meshes in Arbitrary Domains with Aplications to Crack Propogation
Potyondy, David O., Paul A. Wawrzynek and Anthony R. Ingraffea
International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Vol 38, pp.2677-2701, 1995
A new hybrid algorithm for automatically generating either an all-quadrilateral or an all-triangular mesh within an arbitrary shaped domain is described. The input consists of one or more closed loops of straight line segments that bound the domain. Internal mesh density is inferred from the boundary using a recursive spatial decomposition (quadtree) procedure. All triangular element meshes are generated using a boundary contraction procedure. All quadrilateral element meshes are generated by modifying the boundary contraction procedure to produce a mixed element mesh at half the density of the final mesh and then applying a polygon-splitting procedure. The final meshes exhibit good transitioning properties and are compatible with the given boundary segments which are not altered. The algorithm can support discrete crack growth simulation wherein each step of crack growth results in an arbitraru shaped region of elements deleted about each crack tip. The algorithm is described and examples of the generated meshes are provided for a representative selection of cracked and uncracked structures.
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