Parallel and automatic isotropic tetrahedral mesh generation of misaligned assemblies

Abstract

Mesh generation is a challenge for high-performance numerical simulation, one reason is the complex geometry representing solution domain makes pre-processing difficult, especially for those assembly model containing hundreds and thousands of components involving misaligned interfaces between neighboring parts, and no state-of-art meshing tools could provide automatic functions for processing such complex model, another reason is hundreds of millions or even billions meshes should be generated quickly, which also exceeds the capabilities of available tools. In this paper, a novel parallel and automatic mesh generation method is proposed. Firstly, a surface imprinting algorithm based on the hybrid representation of discrete and continuous surfaces is proposed to process misaligned assembly model automatically. Then, the repaired assembly model is used as an input for a carefully designed mesh generation pipeline which connects the procedures of mesh sizing control, and three-level parallel tetrahedral mesh generation in order. This proposed method could produce hundreds of millions consistent mesh qualified for high-performance numerical simulation based on thousands of geometry components. Numerical experiments on a giant dam model and an integrated circuit board model demonstrates the effectiveness of this method.