Local transformations of hexahedral meshes of lower valence

The modification of conforming hexahedral meshes is difficult to perform since their structure does not allow easy local refinement or un-refinement such that the modification does not go through the boundary. In this paper we prove that the set of hex flipping transformations of Bern et al. (2002) [1] is the only possible local modification on a geometrical hex mesh of valence less than five i.e., with less than five edges per vertex. We propose a new basis of transformations that can generate sequences of local modifications on hex meshes of valence less than six. For quadrilateral meshes, we show the equivalence between modifying locally the number of quads on a mesh and the number of its internal vertices.     

高波数问题的超收敛性

 本文考虑求解Helmholtz方程的有限元方法的超逼近性质以及基于PPR后处理方法的超收敛性质.我们首先给出了矩形网格上的p-次元在收敛条件k（kh）^2p+1≤C₀下的有限元解和基于Lobatto点的有限元插值之间的超逼近以及重构的有限元梯度和精确解之间的超收敛分析.然后我们给出了四边形网格上的线性有限元方法的分析.这些估计都给出了与波数k和网格尺寸h的依赖关系.同时我们回顾了三角形网格上的线性有限元的超收敛结果.最后我们给出了数值实验并且结合Richardson外推进一步减少了误差.     

An iterative method for the creation of structured hexahedral meshes over complex orography

In this paper we propose a technique for measuring the quality of hexahedral Cartesian meshes used to model meso-scale atmospheric circulation in 3D. It is used to verify the progress of a novel method for satisfying the Delaunay criterion for structured hexahedral meshes over complex orography with high gradients and wide gradient variability. Based on a simile with potential energy, the iterative method of mesh smoothing is shown to improve mesh quality with logarithmic convergence. The method is evaluated in a practical application in a specific geographic location.     

The focal geometry of circular and conical meshes

Circular meshes are quadrilateral meshes all of whose faces possess a circumcircle, whereas conical meshes are planar quadrilateral meshes where the faces which meet in a vertex are tangent to a right circular cone. Both are amenable to geometric modeling – recently surface approximation and subdivision-like refinement processes have been studied. In this paper we extend the original defining property of conical meshes, namely the existence of face/face offset meshes at constant distance, to circular meshes. We study the close relation between circular and conical meshes, their vertex/vertex and face/face offsets, as well as their discrete normals and focal meshes. In particular we show how to construct a two-parameter family of circular (resp., conical) meshes from a given conical (resp., circular) mesh. We further discuss meshes which have both properties and their relation to discrete surfaces of negative Gaussian curvature. The offset properties of special quadrilateral meshes and the three-dimensional support structures derived from them are highly relevant for computational architectural design of freeform structures. Another aspect important for design is that both circular and conical meshes provide a discretization of the principal curvature lines of a smooth surface, so the mesh polylines represent principal features of the surface described by the mesh.      

Mixed methods on quadrilaterals and hexahedra

We describe a new family of discrete spaces suitable for use with mixed methods on certain quadrilateral and hexahedral meshes. The new spaces are natural in the sense of differential geometry, so all the usual mixed method theory, including the hybrid formulation, carries over to these new elements with proofs unchanged. Because transforming general quadrilaterals into squares introduces nonlinearity and because mixed methods involve the divergence operator, the new spaces are more complicated than either the corresponding Raviart-Thomas spaces for rectangles or corresponding finite element spaces for quadrilaterals. The new spaces are also limited to meshes obtained from a rectangular mesh through the application of a single global bilinear transformation. Despite this limitation, the new elements may be useful in certain topologically regular problems, where initially rectangular grids are deformed to match features of the physical region. They also illustrate the difficulties introduced into the theory of mixed methods by nonlinear transformations.     

Robust intersection of structured hexahedral meshes and degenerate triangle meshes with volume fraction applications

Two methods for calculating the volume and surface area of the intersection between a triangle mesh and a rectangular hexahedron are presented. The main result is an exact method that calculates the polyhedron of intersection and thereafter the volume and surface area of the fraction of the hexahedral cell inside the mesh. The second method is approximate, and estimates the intersection by a least squares plane. While most previous publications focus on non-degenerate triangle meshes, we here extend the methods to handle geometric degeneracies. In particular, we focus on large-scale triangle overlaps, or double surfaces. It is a geometric degeneracy that can be hard to solve with existing mesh repair algorithms. There could also be situations in which it is desirable to keep the original triangle mesh unmodified. Alternative methods that solve the problem without altering the mesh are therefore presented. This is a step towards a method that calculates the solid area and volume fractions of a degenerate triangle mesh including overlapping triangles, overlapping meshes, hanging nodes, and gaps. Such triangle meshes are common in industrial applications. The methods are validated against three industrial test cases. The validation shows that the exact method handles all addressed geometric degeneracies, including double surfaces, small self-intersections, and split hexahedra.     

On using meshes of mixed element types in adaptive finite element analysis

Four different automatic mesh generators capable of generating either triangular meshes or hybrid meshes of mixed element types have been used in the mesh generation process. The performance of these mesh generators were tested by applying them to the adaptive finite element refinement procedure. It is found that by carefully controlling the quality and grading of the quadrilateral elements, an increase in efficiency over pure triangular meshes can be achieved. Furthermore, if linear elements are employed, an optimal hybrid mesh can be obtained most economically by a combined use of the mesh coring technique suggested by Lo and Lau and a selective removal of diagonals from the triangular element mesh. On the other hand, if quadratic elements are used, it is preferable to generate a pure triangular mesh first, and then obtain a hybrid mesh by merging of triangles.     

Efficiently Hex-Meshing Things with Topology

A topological quadrilateral mesh \(Q\) of a connected surface in \(\mathbb {R}^3\) can be extended to a topological hexahedral mesh of the interior domain \(\varOmega \) if and only if \(Q\) has an even number of quadrilaterals and no odd cycle in \(Q\) bounds a surface inside \(\varOmega \) . Moreover, if such a mesh exists, the required number of hexahedra is within a constant factor of the minimum number of tetrahedra in a triangulation of \(\varOmega \) that respects \(Q\) . Finally, if \(Q\) is given as a polyhedron in \(\mathbb {R}^3\) with quadrilateral facets, a topological hexahedral mesh of the polyhedron can be constructed in polynomial time if such a mesh exists. All our results extend to domains with disconnected boundaries. Our results naturally generalize results of Thurston, Mitchell, and Eppstein for genus-zero and bipartite meshes, for which the odd-cycle criterion is trivial.     

Linear complexity hexahedral mesh generation

We show that any polyhedron forming a topological ball with an even number of quadrilateral sides can be partitioned into $\text{O}\text{n}$ topological cubes, meeting face to face. The result generalizes to non-simply-connected polyhedra satisfying an additional bipartiteness condition. The same techniques can also be used to reduce the geometric version of the hexahedral mesh generation problem to a finite case analysis amenable to machine solution.     

A nine-point scheme with explicit weights for diffusion equations on distorted meshes

In this paper, for the structured quadrilateral mesh we derive a nine-point difference scheme which has five cell-centered unknowns and four vertex unknowns. The vertex unknowns are treated as intermediate ones and are expressed as a linear combination of the neighboring cell-centered unknowns, which reduces the scheme to a cell-centered one with a local stencil involving nine cell-centered unknowns. The coefficients in the linear combination are known as the weights and two types of new weights are proposed. These new weights are neither discontinuity dependent nor mesh topology dependent, have explicit expressions, can reduce to the one-dimensional harmonic-average weights on the nonuniform rectangular meshes, and moreover, are easily extended to the unstructured polygonal meshes and non-matching meshes. Both the derivation of the nine-point scheme and that of new weights satisfy the linearity preserving criterion. Numerical experiments show that, with these new weights, the nine-point difference scheme and its simple extension have a nearly second order accuracy on many highly distorted meshes, including structured quadrilateral meshes, unstructured polygonal meshes and non-matching meshes.     

Quading triangular meshes with certain topological constraints

In computer graphics and geometric modeling, shapes are often represented by triangular meshes (also called 3D meshes or manifold triangulations). The quadrangulation of a triangular mesh has wide applications. In this paper, we present a novel method of quading a closed orientable triangular mesh into a quasi-regular quadrangulation, i.e., a quadrangulation that only contains vertices of degree four or five. The quasi-regular quadrangulation produced by our method also has the property that the number of quads of the quadrangulation is the smallest among all the quasi-regular quadrangulations. In addition, by constructing the so-called orthogonal system of cycles our method is more effective to control the quality of the quadrangulation.     

Quading triangular meshes with certain topological constraints

In computer graphics and geometric modeling, shapes are often represented by triangular meshes (also called 3D meshes or manifold triangulations). The quadrangulation of a triangular mesh has wide applications. In this paper, we present a novel method of quading a closed orientable triangular mesh into a quasi-regular quadrangulation, i.e., a quadrangulation that only contains vertices of degree four or five. The quasi-regular quadrangulation produced by our method also has the property that the number of quads of the quadrangulation is the smallest among all the quasi-regular quadrangulations. In addition, by constructing the so-called orthogonal system of cycles our method is more effective to control the quality of the quadrangulation.     

On finite element subspaces over quadrilateral and hexahedral meshes for incompressible viscous flow problems

Summary Optimal rates of convergence for the approximate solution of the stationary Stokes equations are obtained for finite element schemes which use piecewise constants to approximate the pressure and piecewise linear or piecewise bilinear or trilinear polynomials to approximate the velocity over fairly general quadrilateral or hexahedral meshes.This research was supported by NSF Grant MC80-16532     

Superior mesh quality with automatic node mergers

Automatic surface :meshers have been designed with the intent to eliminate the manual effort involved in creating a finite element model. Naturally, the quality of the mesh must be such that the solver will yield accurate results. For geometries having boundaries with short edges relative to the rest of the geometry, the existing meshers yield poor-quality meshes. Hence, the stress analyst must manually attain reasonable mesh quality. This manual effort is very tedious and time consuming. Mesh quality improvement techniques such as smoothing, fail to improve the mesh quality. In this work, a new technique is introduced, which improves the initial boundary node loop quality, and in turn yields high-quality meshes. Examples show marked improvement in quality, and the meshes are comprised of fewer elements.     

Unconditional Superconvergent Analysis of Quasi-Wilson Element for Benjamin-Bona-Mahoney Equation

This article aims to study the unconditional superconvergent behavior of nonconforming quadrilateral quasi-Wilson element for nonlinear Benjamin Bona Mahoney (BBM) equation. For the generalized rectangular meshes including rectangular mesh, deformed rectangular mesh and piecewise deformed rectangular mesh, by use of the special character of this element, that is, the conforming part (bilinear element) has high accuracy estimates on the generalized rectangular meshes and the consistency error can reach order $O(h^2)$, one order higher than its interpolation error, the superconvergent estimates with respect to mesh size $h$ are obtained in the broken $H^1$-norm for the semi-/ fully-discrete schemes. A striking ingredient is that the restrictions between mesh size $h$ and time step $\tau$ required in the previous works are removed. Finally, some numerical results are provided to confirm the theoretical analysis.     

Influence of Gauss and Gauss‐Lobatto quadrature rules on the accuracy of a quadrilateral finite element method in the time domain

In this article, we examine the influence of numerical integration on finite element methods using quadrilateral or hexahedral meshes in the time domain. We pay special attention to the use of Gauss‐Lobatto points to perform mass lumping for any element order. We provide some theoretical results through several error estimates that are completed by various numerical experiments. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2009     

Covolume techniques for anisotropic media

Summary The covolume method, a new approach applicable on general meshes, is extended to discretize and numerically solve the div-curl system in anisotropic media. The covolume method gives simple schemes and good approximations to the solution of the div-curl system. It works directly with the system and utilizes dual pairs of meshes that are orthogonally related. Central to the approach is the introduction of field components tangent and normal to the edges of one of the meshes, and the employment of dual discretization on the dual mesh pairs. The discretization procedures, schemes and error analysis are presented. The convergence of the method is proved.The work was partially done while this author was at Carnegie Mellon University     

Geometrically nonlinear analysis with a 4-node membrane element formulated by the quadrilateral area coordinate method

Recently, a 4-node quadrilateral membrane element AGQ6-I, has been successfully developed for analysis of linear plane problems. Since this model is formulated by the quadrilateral area coordinate method (QACM), a new natural coordinate system for developing quadrilateral finite element models, it is much less sensitive to mesh distortion than other 4-node isoparametric elements and free of various locking problems that arise from irregular mesh geometries. In order to extend these advantages of QACM to nonlinear applications, the total Lagrangian (TL) formulations of element AGQ6-I was established in this paper, which is also the first time that a plane QACM element being applied in the implicit geometrically nonlinear analysis. Numerical examples of geometrically nonlinear analysis show that the presented formulations can prevent loss of accuracy in severely distorted meshes, and therefore, are superior to those of other 4-node isoparametric elements. The efficiency of QACM for developing simple, effective and reliable serendipity plane membrane elements in geometrically nonlinear analysis is demonstrated clearly.     

Finite Volume Methods for Multi-Symplectic PDES

We investigate the application of a cell-vertex finite volume discretization to multi-symplectic PDEs. The investigated discretization reduces to the Preissman box scheme when used on a rectangular grid. Concerning arbitrary quadrilateral grids, we show that only methods with parallelogram-like finite volume cells lead to a multi-symplectic discretization; i.e., to a method that preserves a discrete conservation law of symplecticity. One of the advantages of finite volume methods is that they can be easily adjusted to variable meshes. But, although the implementation of moving mesh finite volume methods for multi-symplectic PDEs is rather straightforward, the restriction to parallelogram-like cells implies that only meshes moving with a constant speed are multi-symplectic. To overcome this restriction, we suggest the implementation of reversible moving mesh methods based on a semi-Lagrangian approach. Numerical experiments are presented for a one dimensional dispersive shallow-water system.     

A multipoint flux mixed finite element method on distorted quadrilaterals and hexahedra

In this paper, we develop a new mixed finite element method for elliptic problems on general quadrilateral and hexahedral grids that reduces to a cell-centered finite difference scheme. A special non-symmetric quadrature rule is employed that yields a positive definite cell-centered system for the pressure by eliminating local velocities. The method is shown to be accurate on highly distorted rough quadrilateral and hexahedral grids, including hexahedra with non-planar faces. Theoretical and numerical results indicate first-order convergence for the pressure and face fluxes.