The fractal behaviour of triangular refined/derefined meshes

Abstract

SUMMARY In the paper the author presents a novel point of view for the refinement and derefinement algorithms of triangular nested meshes using fractal concepts and iterated function systems (IFS). The fractal behaviour can be understood in the sense that these meshes feature a remarkable amplifying invariance under changes of magnification. Here we compare the meshes obtained by the combination of these algorithms with those presented by Bova and Carey (1992). Although both of the meshes are very similar, the current algorithms automatically build and manage sequences of nested irregular discretizations of the domain. The author illustrates here how the application of IFS families is equivalent to the use of an adaptive strategy that combines the refinement procedure with the derefinement one.