Generating tetrahedral volume mesh from surface model

Abstract

In this paper, we present an efficient algorithm to generate tetrahedral meshes from surface models. Our algorithm first subdivides the axis-aligned bounding box of a surface model into a number of uniform tetrahedra, and then generates an initial indention mesh after removing all the tetrahedra outside the surface model by employing a signed distance function, defined by the vertices of the surface model. Subsequently, our algorithm deals with the rough indention mesh according to the relationship between the surface model and the vertices of the tetrahedra bestriding the mesh surface. Finally, the algorithm uses Laplacian smoothing operator to improve the quality of the tetrahedral mesh. Results show that the volume mesh models created by our algorithm have smooth boundary and high-quality interior cells.