Automatic quadrilateral/triangular free‐form mesh generation for planar regions

Abstract

AbstractAutomation of finite element mesh generation holds great benefits for mechanical product development and analysis. In addition to freeing engineers from mundane tasks, automation of mesh generation reduces product cycle design and eliminates human‐related errors. Most of the existing mesh generation methods are either semi‐automatic or require specific topological information. A fully automatic free‐form mesh generation method is described in this paper to alleviate some of these problems. The method is capable of meshing singly or multiply connected convex/concave planar regions. These regions can be viewed as crosssectional areas of 2 1/2 D objects analysed as plane stress, plane strain or axisymmetric stress problems. In addition to being fully automatic, the method produces quadrilateral or triangular elements with aspect rations near one. Moreover, it does not require any topological constraints on the regions to be meshed; i.e. it provides free‐form mesh generation. The input to the method includes the region's boundary curves, the element size and the mesh grading information. The method begins by decomposing the planar region to be meshed into convex subregions. Each subregion is meshed by first generating nodes on its boundaries using the input element size. The boundary nodes are then offset to mesh the subregion. The resulting meshes are merged together to form the final mesh. The paper describes the method in detail, algorithms developed to implement it and sample numerical examples. Results on parametric studies of the method performance are also discussed.