A general mesh smoothing method for finite elements

Abstract

This paper presents a general mesh smoothing method for finite elements. The method deals with two and three-dimensional meshes with virtually any type of element. To evaluate the quality of different element types, the paper also introduces a broad quality function. The proposed method works by solving a standard deformation analysis where nodal forces aim to deform each element into an optimally placed reference element. A detailed algorithm of the proposed smoothing method is presented which is suitable for a straightforward computer implementation. Several application examples in two and three-dimensions are presented and analyzed in order to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed algorithm. In all cases very good quality improvements were obtained with very few iterations. Also, the proposed method provided greater improvements when compared to conventional Laplacian-based methods.