Automatic metric advancing front triangulation over curved surfaces

Abstract

A 3D surface mesh generation scheme is suggested for the triangulation of general bi-variate surfaces. The target surface to be meshed is represented as a union of bi-variate sub-surfaces and hence a wide range of surfaces can be modelled. Different useful features such as repeated curves, crack lines and surface branches are included in the geometrical and topological models to increase the flexibility of the mesh generation scheme. The surface metric tensor specification is employed to define and control the element characteristics in the mesh generation procedure. A robust metric triangulation kernel is used for parametric space mesh generation. The shape qualities of the sub-surface meshes generated are then improved by using some ad hoc mesh quality enhancement schemes before they are combined together to form the final mesh. Numerical examples indicate that high quality surface meshes with rapid varying element size and stretching characteristics can be generated within a reasonable time limit in a few mesh adaptive iterations.