Toward real-time mesh generation

Jeanne Pellerin and Célestin Marot and Amaury Johnen and Kilian Verhestsel and Jean-François Remacle. ( 2018 )
in: 2018 Ring Meeting

Abstract

Mesh generation is a key step of all modeling and analysis workflows. Meshes are used to represent models but also to simulate their behavior through finite element or finite volume computations. However, their generation is a very time consuming task that can eat up to 80% of the time spent building a model. In this work, we will review the different strategies that are relevant to build tetrahedral and hexahedral meshes in geological modeling. If algorithms exist to generate tetrahedral meshes of general domains, their efficiency is not optimal and they are essentially sequential. We will present the parallelization scheme implemented in the HXT library to solve efficiency issues of quality tetrahedral mesh generation and generate meshes of 50 millions tetrahedra in about 1.5 minutes on a laptop. From this tetrahedral mesh, we are then able to build a hexahedral dominant mesh, composed of hexahedra, prisms and pyramids that are built by combining tetrahedra. Our indirect hex-meshing algorithm is ten times faster than state-of-the-art methods and is able to generate large meshes in a few dozens of seconds. The method is demonstrated on various CAD and geological models.

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BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{RUNKJRM78,
 abstract = { Mesh generation is a key step of all modeling and analysis workflows.
Meshes are used to represent models but also to simulate their behavior
through finite element or finite volume computations. However, their generation
is a very time consuming task that can eat up to 80% of the time spent building a model.

In this work, we will review the different strategies that are relevant to build
tetrahedral and hexahedral meshes in geological modeling.
If algorithms exist to generate tetrahedral meshes of general domains,
their efficiency is not optimal and they are essentially sequential.
We will present the parallelization scheme implemented in the HXT library to solve
efficiency issues of quality tetrahedral mesh generation and generate
meshes of 50 millions tetrahedra in about 1.5 minutes on a laptop.
From this tetrahedral mesh, we are then able to build a hexahedral dominant mesh,
composed of hexahedra, prisms and pyramids that are built by combining tetrahedra.
Our indirect hex-meshing algorithm is ten times faster than state-of-the-art methods
and is able to generate large meshes in a few dozens of seconds.
The method is demonstrated on various CAD and geological models. },
 author = { Pellerin, Jeanne AND Marot, Célestin AND Johnen, Amaury AND Verhestsel, Kilian AND Remacle, Jean-François },
 booktitle = { 2018 Ring Meeting },
 title = { Toward real-time mesh generation },
 year = { 2018 }
}