A boundary and soil interface conforming unstructured local mesh refinement for geological structures

Abstract

Adaptive mesh methods are reliable and efficient approaches in hydrological and hydraulic modelling. In some cases, however, big challenges are faced when constructing the adaptive meshes that not only have a good quality but also maintain the integrity of the geological structures. In this paper, a local refinement technique using Delaunay triangulation method is developed for these purposes. Specific treatments are proposed to deal with the soil interfaces and boundaries usually encountered in geological structures. The application and quantitative evaluation show that a satisfactory result has been obtained for a complicated geological slope.