Parallel unstructured mesh generation by an advancing front method

Abstract

Mesh generation is a critical step in high fidelity computational simulations. High-quality and high-density meshes are required to accurately capture the complex physical phenomena. A robust approach for a parallel framework has been developed to generate large-scale meshes in a short period of time. A coarse tetrahedral mesh is generated first to provide the basis of block interfaces and then is partitioned into a number of sub-domains using METIS partitioning algorithms. A volume mesh is generated on each sub-domain in parallel using an advancing front method. Dynamic load balancing is achieved by evenly distributing work among the processors. All the sub-domains are combined to create a single volume mesh. The combined volume mesh can be smoothed to remove the artifacts in the interfaces between sub-domains. A void region is defined inside each sub-domain to reduce the data points during the smoothing operation. The scalability of the parallel mesh generation is evaluated to quantify the improvement on shared- and distributed-memory computer systems.