Skip to main content
Log in

Fully automatic and fast mesh size specification for unstructured mesh generation

  • Original article
  • Published:
Engineering with Computers Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A fully automatic surface mesh generation system is presented in this paper. The automation is achieved by an automatic determination of a consistent mesh size distribution, which is based on geometry rasterisation. The user specifies a minimal and maximal allowed mesh size, and a maximal allowed curvature angle for the complete geometry, or, rather, parts of it. Now, these local curvature and local characteristic lengths of the geometry are computed, which determine the local mesh size. These local mesh sizes are stored and smoothed in a Cartesian background mesh. Afterwards, the triangulation is generated by an advancing front triangulator: the local resolution of the surface triangulation is determined by the mesh sizes stored in the Cartesian background mesh. The object-oriented design and implementation is described. The complete system is very fast due to an efficient parallelisation based on MPI for computer systems with distributed memory.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6a, b
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Fig. 17
Fig. 18
Fig. 19
Fig. 20

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Hirschel EH, Schwarz W (1995) Mesh generation for aerospace CFD applications. In: Surveys on mathematics for industry, vol 4. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 249–265

  2. Hitzel SM, Tremel U, Deister F, Rieger H (2003) Complex configuration meshing—an industrial view and approach. AIAA paper 2003-4130

  3. TranscenData (2002) CADfix—version 5.0 training manual. http://www.transcendata.com

  4. Weatherill NP (1999) Unstructured grids: procedures and applications. In: Thompson JF, Soni BK, Weatherill NP (eds) Handbook of grid generation, chap 26. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida

  5. McMorris H, Kallinderis Y (1997) Octree-advancing front methods for generation of unstructured surface and volume meshes. AIAA J 35(6):976–984

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Deister F, Hirschel EH (2002) Self-organizing hybrid Cartesian grid/solution system with multigrid. AIAA paper 2002-0112

  7. Gamma E, Helm R, Johnson R, Vlissides J (1995) Design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts

    Google Scholar 

  8. Stroustrup B (1997) The C++ programming language, 3rd edn. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts

  9. FLITE-3D user manual (1996) Computational and Civil Engineering Department, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP

  10. Tremel U, Deister F, Hassan O, Weatherill NP (2004) Automatic unstructured surface mesh generation for complex configurations. Int J Numer Meth Fl 45:341–364

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Yerry MA, Shephard MS (1984) Automatic three-dimensional mesh generation by the modified-octree technique. Int J Numer Meth Eng 20:1965–1990

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  12. Bonet J, Peraire J (1991) An alternating digital tree (ADT) algorithm for 3D geometric searching and intersection problems. Int J Numer Meth Eng 31:1–17

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Foley JD, van Dam A, Feiner SK, Hughes JF(1996) Computer graphics—principles and practice, 2nd edn. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts

  14. Piegl LA, Richard AM (1995) Tessellating trimmed NURBS surfaces. Comput Aided Des 27(1):16–26

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Samet H (1989) Neighbour finding in images represented by octrees. Comput Vis Graph Image Processing 46(3):367–386

    Google Scholar 

  16. Tremel U, Deister F, Hassan O, Weatherill NP (2003) Parallel generation of unstructured surface grids. In: Proceedings of 12th international meshing roundtable, Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 2003. Sandia National Laboratories, SAND-2003-3030P, pp 43–53

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Stephan M. Hitzel, EADS M, for the preparation of the CAD model for the generic fighter aircraft configuration.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Frank Deister.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Deister, F., Tremel, U., Hassan, O. et al. Fully automatic and fast mesh size specification for unstructured mesh generation. Engineering with Computers 20, 237–248 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-004-0291-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-004-0291-5

Keywords

Navigation