Single and multiple springback technique for construction and control of thick prismatic mesh layers

Abstract

Abstract We suggest an algorithm for construction of semi-structured thick prismatic mesh layers which guarantees an absence of inverted prismatic cells in resulting layer and allows one to control near-surface mesh orthogonality. Initial mesh is modelled as a thin layer of highly compressed prisms made of hyperelastic material glued to the triangulated surface. In order to compute robust normals at the vertices of the surface mesh we use quadratic programming algorithm based on the nearest ball concept. This pre-stressed material expands, possibly with self-penetration and extrusion to exterior of computational domain until target layer thickness is attained. Special preconditioned relaxation procedure is proposed based on the solution of stationary springback problem. It is shown that preconditioner can handle very stiff problems. Once an offset prismatic mesh is constructed, self-intersections are eliminated using iterative prism cutting procedure.Next, variational advancing front procedure is applied for refinement and precise orthogonalization of prismatic layer near boundaries. We demonstrate that resulting mesh layer is ‘almost mesh-independent’ in a sense that the dependence of thickness and shape of the layer on mesh resolution and triangle quality is weak. It is possible to apply elastic springback technique sequentially layer by layer. We compare single springback technique with multiple springback technique in terms of mesh quality, stiffness of local variational problems and mesh orthogonality or/and layer thickness balance.