Efficient unstructured quadrilateral mesh generation

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Vol 49, Num 10, pp.1327 - 1350, December 2000

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Abstract

This work is devoted to the description of an algorithm for automatic quadrilateral mesh generation. The technique is based on a recursive decomposition of the domain into quadrilateral elements. This automatically generates meshes composed entirely by quadrilaterals over complex geometries (there is no need for a previous step where triangles are generated). A background mesh with the desired element sizes allows to obtain the preferred sizes anywhere in the domain. The final mesh can be viewed as the optimal one given the objective function is defined. The recursive algorithm induces an efficient data structure which optimizes the computer cost. Several examples are presented to show the efficiency of this algorithm.