Hexahedral mesh quality improvement via edge-angle optimization. (February 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Xu, Kaoji; Gao, Xifeng; Chen, Guoning
• Is Part Of: Computers & graphics. Volume 70(2018)
• Page Start: 17
• Page End: 27
• Publication Date: 2018-02
• Subjects: Hex-mesh -- Untangling -- Quality improvement -- Optimization; Computer graphics -- Periodicals; 006.6
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cag.2017.07.002
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0097-8493

Abstract

Highlights: A simple and practical technique to untangle and improve the quality of hexahedral mesh is introduced. An effective way to increase the minimum scaled Jacobian is proposed. 100 meshes have been optimized by our automatic approach. Graphical abstract: Abstract: We introduce a simple and practical technique to untangle and improve hexahedral (hex-) meshes. We achieve that by enabling the deformation of the boundary surfaces during the untangling process, which provides more space to reach a valid solution. To improve the element quality, an angle-based optimization strategy is proposed, which has much simpler formulation than the existing methods. The deformed volume after optimization is then pulled back to the original one using an inversion-free deformation. In contrast to the current methods, we perform the untangling and quality improvement within a few local regions surrounding elements with undesired quality, which can effectively improve the minimum scaled Jacobian (MSJ) quality of the mesh over the state-of-the-art method. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods by applying it to hex-meshes generated by a range of methods.