Parallel generation of unstructured surface grids

Abstract

In this paper, a new grid generation system is presented for the parallel generation of unstructured triangular surface grids. The object-oriented design and implementation of the system, the internal components and the parallel meshing process itself are described. Initially in a rasterisation stage, the geometry to be meshed is analysed and a smooth distribution of local element sizes in 3-D space is set up automatically and stored in a Cartesian mesh. This background mesh is used by the advancing front surface mesher as spacing definition for the triangle generation. Both the rasterisation and the meshing are MPI-parallelised. The underlying principles and strategies will be outlined together with the advantages and limitations of the approach. The paper will be concluded with examples demonstrating the capabilities of the presented approach.