Longest Edge Bisection Research Articles

3-D parallel anisotropic inversion of controlled-source electromagnetic data using nested tetrahedral grids

SUMMARY Geophysicists today face the challenge of quickly and reliably interpreting extensive controlled-source electromagnetic (CSEM) data sets to map subsurface conductivity structures within realistic geological environments. An ideal 3-D CSEM inversion algorithm using tetrahedral grids should be capable of distinguishing different resolution requirements between forward modelling and inversion grids, have an optimal parallel strategy that fully exploits the inherent independence of CSEM data sets while also possessing the capability to handle large-scale geo-electrical models, and incorporate conductivity anisotropy which should be a common characteristic in realistic subsurface environments. However, existing tools in the geo-electromagnetic community often fall short of these three demands. Addressing this gap, our study introduces a scalable and parallel anisotropic inversion technique for CSEM data, capitalizing on the potential of unstructured tetrahedral grids. We first apply the tetrahedral longest-edge bisection method to create a refined dense, heterogeneous forward modelling grid from a coarse inversion grid. This refinement, focused on areas around transmitters and receivers, is seamlessly integrated within the coarser inversion grid’s topology, enabling precise conductivity mapping and preserving electromagnetic response accuracy during model updates. We further innovate with a source-mesh double-level parallel strategy, utilizing the message passing interface technique for parallel handling of independent CSEM data sets and large-scale geo-electrical models. Externally, we dedicate a processor for inversion model updates employing the Limited-memory Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno optimization algorithm and divide other processors into groups, each associated with specific transmitting sources and frequencies. Internally, in each group, we employ a domain-decomposition-based scalable and robust iterative solvers using the Auxiliary-Space Maxwell pre-conditioner to parallel quickly calculate the electromagnetic responses from its assigned source-frequency set. Additionally, recognizing the potential for electrical conductivity anisotropy in field data, we incorporate the case of vertical transverse isotropy. We validate the effectiveness of our method through examples, including an isotropic land model with undulating topography, an anisotropic marine model and a real-field data case. Results from both synthetic and field data inversions underscore our method’s significant advancements in efficiency and practicality, particularly in addressing large-scale 3-D CSEM data sets inversion challenges in realistic geological environments.

On Dealing with Minima at the Border of a Simplicial Feasible Area in Simplicial Branch and Bound

AbstractWe consider a simplicial branch and bound Global Optimization algorithm, where the search region is a simplex. Apart from using longest edge bisection, a simplicial partition set can be reduced due to monotonicity of the objective function. If there is a direction in which the objective function is monotone over a simplex, depending on whether the facets that may contain the minimum are at the border of the search region, we can remove the simplex completely, or reduce it to some of its border facets. Our research question deals with finding monotone directions and labeling facets of a simplex as border after longest edge bisection and reduction due to monotonicity. Experimental results are shown over a set of global optimization problems where the feasible set is defined as a simplex, and a global minimum point is located at a face of the simplicial feasible area.

Similarity Classes of the Longest-Edge Trisection of Triangles

This paper studies the triangle similarity classes obtained by iterative application of the longest-edge trisection of triangles. The longest-edge trisection (3T-LE) of a triangle is obtained by joining the two points which divide the longest edge in three equal parts with the opposite vertex. This partition, as well as the longest-edge bisection (2T-LE), does not degenerate, which means that there is a positive lower bound to the minimum angle generated. However, unlike what happens with the 2T-LE, the number of similarity classes appearing by the iterative application of the 3T-LE to a single initial triangle is not finite in general. There are only three exceptions to this fact: the right triangle with its sides in the ratio 1:2:3 and the other two triangles in its orbit. This result, although of a combinatorial nature, is proved here with the machinery of discrete dynamics in a triangle shape space with hyperbolic metric. It is also shown that for a point with an infinite orbit, infinite points of the orbit are in three circles with centers at the points with finite orbits.

An Approximation Algorithm for Optimal Piecewise Linear Interpolations of Bounded Variable Products

We investigate the optimal piecewise linear interpolation of the bivariate product xy over rectangular domains. More precisely, our aim is to minimize the number of simplices in the triangulation underlying the interpolation, while respecting a prescribed approximation error. First, we show how to construct optimal triangulations consisting of up to five simplices. Using these as building blocks, we construct a triangulation scheme called crossing swords that requires at most - times the number of simplices in any optimal triangulation. In other words, we derive an approximation algorithm for the optimal triangulation problem. We also show that crossing swords yields optimal triangulations in the case that each simplex has at least one axis-parallel edge. Furthermore, we present approximation guarantees for other well-known triangulation schemes, namely for the red refinement and longest-edge bisection strategies as well as for a generalized version of K1-triangulations. Thereby, we are able to show that our novel approach dominates previous triangulation schemes from the literature, which is underlined by illustrative numerical examples.

A parallel adaptive finite-element approach for 3-D realistic controlled-source electromagnetic problems using hierarchical tetrahedral grids

SUMMARY To effectively and efficiently interpret or invert controlled-source electromagnetic (CSEM) data which are recorded in areas with the kind of complex geological environments and arbitrary topography that are typical, 3-D CSEM forward modelling software that can quickly solve large-scale problems, provide accurate electromagnetic responses for complex geo-electrical models and can be easily incorporated into inversion algorithms are required. We have developed a parallel goal-oriented adaptive mesh refinement finite-element approach for frequency-domain 3-D CSEM forward modelling with hierarchical tetrahedral grids that can offer accurate electromagnetic responses for large-scale complex models and that can efficiently serve for inversion. The approach uses the goal-oriented adaptive vector finite element method to solve the total electric field vector equation. The geo-electrical model is discretized by unstructured tetrahedral grids which can deal with complex underground geological models with arbitrary surface topography. Different from previous adaptive finite element software working on unstructured tetrahedral grids, we have utilized a novel mesh refinement technique named the longest edge bisection method to generate hierarchically refined grids. As the refined grids are nested into the coarse grids, the refinement technique can precisely map the electrical parameters of inversion grids onto the forward modelling grids so that the extra numerical errors generated by the inconsistency of electrical parameters between inversion grids and forward modelling grids are eliminated. In addition, we use the parallel domain-decomposition technique to further accelerate the computations, and the flexible generalized minimum residual solver (FGMRES) with an auxiliary Maxwell solver pre-conditioner to solve the final large-scale system of linear equations. In the end, we validate the performance of the proposed scheme using two synthetic models and one realistic model. We demonstrate that accurate electromagnetic fields can be obtained by comparison with the analytic solutions and that the code is highly scalable for large-scale problems with millions or even hundreds of millions of unknowns. For the synthetic 3-D model and the realistic model with complex geometry, our solutions match well with the results calculated by an existing 3-D CSEM forward modelling code. Both synthetic and realistic examples demonstrate that our newly developed code is an effective, efficient forward modelling engine for interpreting CSEM field data acquired in areas of complex geology and topography.

Improved Maximum Angle Estimate for Longest-Edge Bisection

In this note we construct an upper estimate on the maximum angles of triangles generated by the longest-edge bisection algorithms applied to a triangle. This upper bound considerably improves upon one inherited from the well-known minimum angle estimation, thus providing tighter two-sided estimation of the angles generated by bisections. This estimate also guarantees the validity of the maximum angle condition, widely used in finite element analysis and computer graphics.

Computing the Exact Number of Similarity Classes in the Longest Edge Bisection of Tetrahedra

Showing whether the longest-edge (LE) bisection of tetrahedra meshes degenerates the stability condition or not is still an open problem. Some reasons, in part, are due to the cost for achieving the computation of similarity classes of millions of tetrahedra. We prove the existence of tetrahedra where the LE bisection introduces, at most, 37 similarity classes. This family of new tetrahedra was roughly pointed out by Adler in 1983. However, as far as we know, there has been no evidence confirming its existence. We also introduce a new data structure and algorithm for computing the number of similarity tetrahedral classes based on integer arithmetic, storing only the square of edges. The algorithm lets us perform compact and efficient high-level similarity class computations with a cost that is only dependent on the number of similarity classes.

Concurrent Binary Trees (with application to longest edge bisection)

We introduce the concurrent binary tree (CBT), a novel concurrent representation to build and update arbitrary binary trees in parallel. Fundamentally, our representation consists of a binary heap, i.e., a 1D array, that explicitly stores the sum-reduction tree of a bitfield. In this bitfield, each one-valued bit represents a leaf node of the binary tree encoded by the CBT, which we locate algorithmically using a binary-search over the sum-reduction. We show that this construction allows to dispatch down to one thread per leaf node and that, in turn, these threads can safely split and/or remove nodes concurrently via simple bitwise operations over the bitfield. The practical benefit of CBTs lies in their ability to accelerate binary-tree-based algorithms with parallel processors. To support this claim, we leverage our representation to accelerate a longest-edge-bisection-based algorithm that computes and renders adaptive geometry for large-scale terrains entirely on the GPU. For this specific algorithm, the CBT accelerates processing speed linearly with the number of processors.

Parallel algorithms for computing the smallest binary tree size in unit simplex refinement

Refinement of the unit simplex by iterative longest edge bisection (LEB) up to sub-simplices have a size smaller or equal to a given accuracy, generates a binary tree. For a dimension higher than three, the size of the generated tree depends on the bisected LE. There may exist more than one selection sequence of LE that solves the Smallest Binary Tree Size Problem (SBTSP). Solving SBTSP by full enumeration requires considering every possible LE bisection in each sub-simplex. This is an irregular Combinatorial Optimization problem with an increasing computational burden in the dimension and the stopping criterion. Therefore, parallel computing is appealing to find the minimum size for hard instances in a reasonable time.The aim of this study is to develop and compare threaded algorithms running on multicore systems to solve the SBTS problem. Versions running on multicore systems with a static number of threads using TBB, and a dynamic number of threads using Pthread are compared. Interestingly, TBB scales better than the Pthread implementations for lower dimensional problems. However, when the problem dimension is higher than six, the Pthread approach with a dynamic number of threads finds a solution, where the TBB version fails. This is caused by the smaller memory footprint of the Pthread version, as it traverses deeper branches of the tree than the TBB work-stealing approach.

Generating a smallest binary tree by proper selection of the longest edges to bisect in a unit simplex refinement

In several areas like global optimization using branch-and-bound methods for mixture design, the unit n-simplex is refined by longest edge bisection (LEB). This process provides a binary search tree. For n>2, simplices appearing during the refinement process can have more than one longest edge (LE). The size of the resulting binary tree depends on the specific sequence of bisected longest edges. The questions are how to calculate the size of one of the smallest binary trees generated by LEB and how to find the corresponding sequence of LEs to bisect, which can be represented by a set of LE indices. Algorithms answering these questions are presented here. We focus on sets of LE indices that are repeated at a level of the binary tree. A set of LEs was presented in Aparicio et al. (Informatica 26(1):17–32, 2015), for n=3. An additional question is whether this set is the best one under the so-called m_k-valid condition.

On refinement of the unit simplex using regular simplices

A natural way to define branching in branch and bound (B&B) for blending problems is bisection. The consequence of using bisection is that partition sets are in general irregular. The question is how to use regular simplices in the refinement of the unit simplex. A regular simplex with fixed orientation can be represented by its center and size, facilitating storage of the search tree from a computational perspective. The problem is that a simplex defined in a space with dimension $$n>3$$n>3 cannot be subdivided into regular subsimplices without overlapping. We study the characteristics of the refinement by regular simplices. The main challenge is to find a refinement with a good convergence ratio which allows discarding simplices in an overlapped and already evaluated region. As the efficiency of the division rule in B&B algorithms is instance dependent, we focus on the worst case behaviour, i.e. none of the branches are pruned. This paper shows that for this case surprisingly an overlapping regular refinement may generate less simplices to be evaluated than longest edge bisection. On the other hand, the number of evaluated vertices may be larger.

Foldover-Free Mesh Warping for Constrained Texture Mapping.

Mapping texture onto 3D meshes with positional constraints is a popular technique that can effectively enhance the visual realism of geometric models. Such a process usually requires constructing a valid mesh embedding satisfying a set of positional constraints, which is known to be a challenging problem. This paper presents a novel algorithm for computing a foldover-free piecewise linear mapping with exact positional constraints. The algorithm begins with an unconstrained planar embedding, followed by iterative constrained mesh transformations. At the heart of the algorithm are radial basis function (RBF)-based warping and the longest edge bisection (LEB)-based refinement. A delicate integration of the RBF-based warping and the LEB-based refinement provides a provably-foldover-free, smooth constrained mesh warping, which can handle a large number of constraints and output a visually pleasing mapping result without extra smoothing optimization. The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Parallel Triangular Mesh Refinement by Longest Edge Bisection

Longest edge bisection based refinement, which is also known as Rivara refinement, is a well-known technique for adaptive refinement of unstructured triangular meshes. Our work contributes a fine grain parallel adaptive refinement algorithm. Refinements can propagate in an irregular fashion to neighboring triangles. Once propagations are done, refinement templates can be applied. Since elements are created and deleted in an irregular fashion, dynamic data structures need to be designed and concurrency issues need to be resolved. Unlike the previous approaches that solved an independent set problem to resolve concurrent updates, our algorithm instead makes use of prefix computations. Tests carried out on an NVIDIA Tesla M2070 GPU show that running time on a 32 million element mesh is overall roughly 25 times faster than the sequential run on an Intel Xeon system. Our refinement code is available at http://code.google.com/p/gpu-mesh-refine.

Real‐Time Isosurface Extraction With View‐Dependent Level of Detail and Applications

AbstractVolumetric scalar data sets are common in many scientific, engineering and medical applications where they originate from measurements or simulations. Furthermore, they can represent geometric scene content, e.g. as distance or density fields. Often isosurfaces are extracted, either for indirect volume visualization in the former category, or to simply obtain a polygonal representation in case of the latter. However, even moderately sized volume data sets can result in complex isosurfaces which are challenging to recompute in real time, e.g. when the user modifies the isovalue or when the data itself are dynamic. In this paper, we present a GPU‐friendly algorithm for the extraction of isosurfaces, which provides adaptive level of detail rendering with view‐dependent tessellation. It is based on a longest edge bisection scheme where the resulting tetrahedral cells are subdivided into four hexahedra, which then form the domain for the subsequent isosurface extraction step. Our algorithm generates meshes with good triangle quality even for highly non‐linear scalar data. In contrast to previous methods, it does not require any stitching between regions of different levels of detail. As all computation is performed at run time and no pre‐processing is required, the algorithm naturally supports dynamic data and allows us to change isovalues at any time.

Terrain Real-Time Rendering Based on Projected Grid and GPU Unsaturated Error Metric

To render terrain realistically and efficiently, we firstly introduce projected grid to construct terrain coarse meshes. Projected grid uses longest edge bisection, taking advantages of fracture eliminating, to implement triangle subdivision. To realize adaptive refinement of terrain coarse meshes, we introduce the concept of bounding sphere and the idea of unsaturated error metric, design GPU unsaturated error metric based on bounding sphere, in order to implement terrain LOD modeling finally. Experimental results show that projected grid avoids culling and improves the speed of terrain rendering, GPU unsaturated error metric can select terrain coarse meshes nodes accurately, reduce triangles number and keep terrain feature. As a result, the algorithm can achieve a high FPS and a good visual effect, implement terrain real-time rendering.

Properties of triangulations obtained by the longest-edge bisection

AbstractThe Longest-Edge (LE) bisection of a triangle is obtained by joining the midpoint of its longest edge with the opposite vertex. Here two properties of the longest-edge bisection scheme for triangles are proved. For any triangle, the number of distinct triangles (up to similarity) generated by longest-edge bisection is finite. In addition, if LE-bisection is iteratively applied to an initial triangle, then minimum angle of the resulting triangles is greater or equal than a half of the minimum angle of the initial angle. The novelty of the proofs is the use of an hyperbolic metric in a shape space for triangles.

An adaptive degrees-of-freedom finite-element method for transient magnetic field analysis

A novel adaptive degrees-of-freedom (DoFs) finite-element method (FEM) for the numerical computation of transient magnetic fields is presented. The proposed adaptive FEM incorporates functions of both mesh refinement and mesh coarsening. The mesh refinement procedure is implemented using the longest edge bisection algorithm, whereas for the coarsening procedure, a novel DoFs constraining algorithm is proposed to replace conventional algorithms which explicitly eliminate the unnecessary nodes which have sufficiently small estimated errors. This process avoids solution interpolation errors due to the changes from a fine mesh to a coarse mesh. It can also be implemented readily in element analysis level. The slave-master technique is adopted to eliminate the constrained DoFs in the linear system conveniently to result in coarsening of the underlying finite element space and hence it has the same effect as mesh coarsening. Implementation details of the algorithm are presented and numerical examples using the proposed method are tested to validate the algorithm and showcase its effectiveness in transient magnetic field computation of engineering problems.

On numerical regularity of the face-to-face longest-edge bisection algorithm for tetrahedral partitions

The finite element method usually requires regular or strongly regular families of partitions in order to get guaranteed a priori or a posteriori error estimates. In this paper we examine the recently invented longest-edge bisection algorithm that always produces only face-to-face simplicial partitions. First, we prove that the regularity of the family of partitions generated by this algorithm is equivalent to its strong regularity in any dimension. Second, we present a number of 3d numerical tests, which demonstrate that the technique seems to produce regular (and therefore strongly regular) families of tetrahedral partitions. However, a mathematical proof of this statement is still an open problem.

Isodiamond Hierarchies: An Efficient Multiresolution Representation for Isosurfaces and Interval Volumes

Efficient multiresolution representations for isosurfaces and interval volumes are becoming increasingly important as the gap between volume data sizes and processing speed continues to widen. Our multiresolution scalar field model is a hierarchy of tetrahedral clusters generated by longest edge bisection that we call a hierarchy of diamonds. We propose two multiresolution models for representing isosurfaces, or interval volumes, extracted from a hierarchy of diamonds which exploit its regular structure. These models are defined by subsets of diamonds in the hierarchy that we call isodiamonds, which are enhanced with geometric and topological information for encoding the relation between the isosurface, or interval volume, and the diamond itself. The first multiresolution model, called a relevant isodiamond hierarchy, encodes the isodiamonds intersected by the isosurface, or interval volume, as well as their nonintersected ancestors, while the second model, called a minimal isodiamond hierarchy, encodes only the intersected isodiamonds. Since both models operate directly on the extracted isosurface or interval volume, they require significantly less memory and support faster selective refinement queries than the original multiresolution scalar field, but do not support dynamic isovalue modifications. Moreover, since a minimal isodiamond hierarchy only encodes intersected isodiamonds, its extracted meshes require significantly less memory than those extracted from a relevant isodiamond hierarchy. We demonstrate the compactness of isodiamond hierarchies by comparing them to an indexed representation of the mesh at full resolution.

Supercubes: A High-Level Primitive for Diamond Hierarchies

Volumetric datasets are often modeled using a multiresolution approach based on a nested decomposition of the domain into a polyhedral mesh. Nested tetrahedral meshes generated through the longest edge bisection rule are commonly used to decompose regular volumetric datasets since they produce highly adaptive crack-free representations. Efficient representations for such models have been achieved by clustering the set of tetrahedra sharing a common longest edge into a structure called a diamond. The alignment and orientation of the longest edge can be used to implicitly determine the geometry of a diamond and its relations to the other diamonds within the hierarchy. We introduce the supercube as a high-level primitive within such meshes that encompasses all unique types of diamonds. A supercube is a coherent set of edges corresponding to three consecutive levels of subdivision. Diamonds are uniquely characterized by the longest edge of the tetrahedra forming them and are clustered in supercubes through the association of the longest edge of a diamond with a unique edge in a supercube. Supercubes are thus a compact and highly efficient means of associating information with a subset of the vertices, edges and tetrahedra of the meshes generated through longest edge bisection. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the supercube representation when encoding multiresolution diamond hierarchies built on a subset of the points of a regular grid. We also show how supercubes can be used to efficiently extract meshes from diamond hierarchies and to reduce the storage requirements of such variable-resolution meshes.