Polyhedral Mesh Generation and A Treatise on Concave Geometrical Edges

Abstract

Three methods are investigated to remove the concavity at the boundary edges and/or vertices during polyhedral mesh generation by a dual mesh method. The non-manifold elements insertion method is the first method examined. Concavity can be removed by inserting non-manifold surfaces along the concave edges and using them as an internal boundary before applying Delaunay mesh generation. Conical cell decomposition/bisection is the second method examined. Any concave polyhedral cell is decomposed into polygonal conical cells first, with the polygonal primal edge cut-face as the base and the dual vertex on the boundary as the apex. The bisection of the concave polygonal conical cell along the concave edge is done. Finally the cut-along-concave-edge method is examined. Every concave polyhedral cell is cut along the concave edges. If a cut cell is still concave, then it is cut once more. The first method is very promising but not many mesh generators can handle the non-manifold surfaces especially for complex geometries. The second method is applicable to any concave cell with a rather simple procedure but the decomposed cells are too small compared to neighbor non-decomposed cells. Therefore, it may cause some problems during the numerical analysis application. The cut-along-concave-edge method is the most viable method at this time. In this paper, discussions are presented with the boundary conforming Delaunay primal mesh to reduce the complexity that may be expected at the boundary. Polygonal prism mesh generation at the viscous layer is also investigated.