A constrained optimization approach to finite element mesh smoothing

The quality of a finite element solution has been shown to be affected by the quality of the underlying mesh. A poor mesh may lead to unstable and/or inaccurate finite element approximations. Mesh quality is often characterized by the “smoothness” or “shape” of the elements (triangles in 2-D or tetrahedra in 3-D). Most automatic mesh generators produce an initial mesh where the aspect ratio of the elements are unacceptably high. In this paper, a new approach to produce acceptable quality meshes from a topologically valid initial mesh is presented. Given an initial mesh (nodal coordinates and element connectivity), a “smooth” final mesh is obtained by solving a constrained optimization problem. The variables for the iterative optimization procedure are the nodal coordinates (excluding, the boundary nodes) of the finite element mesh, and appropriate bounds are imposed on these to prevent an unacceptable finite element mesh. Examples are given of the application of the above method for 2- and 3-D meshes generated using automatic mesh generators. Results indicate that the new method not only yields better quality elements when compared with the traditional Laplacian smoothing, but also guarantees a valid mesh unlike the Laplacian method.     

A regional mixed refinement procedure for finite element mesh design

A practical algorithm is developed for automated mesh design in finite element stress analysis. A regional mixed mesh improvement procedure is introduced. The error control, algorithm implementation, code development, and the solution accuracy are discussed. Numerical examples include automated mesh designs for plane elastic media with singularities. The efficiency of the procedure is demonstrated.     

Adaptive Runge-Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin Methods with Modified Ghost Fluid Method for Simulating the Compressible Two-Medium Flow

In this paper, we investigate using the adaptive Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) methods with the modified ghost fluid method (MGFM) in conjunction with the adaptive RKDG methods for solving the level set function to simulate the compressible two-medium flow in one and two dimensions. A shock detection technique (KXRCF method) is adopted as an indicator to identify the troubled cell, which serves for further numerical limiting procedure which uses a modified TVB limiter to reconstruct different degrees of freedom and an adaptive mesh refinement procedure. If the computational mesh should be refined or coarsened, and the detail of the implementation algorithm is presented on how to modulate the hanging nodes and redefine the numerical solutions of the two-medium flow and the level set function on such adaptive mesh. Extensive numerical tests are provided to illustrate the proposed adaptive methods may possess the capability of enhancing the resolutions nearby the discontinuities inside of the single medium flow region and material interfacial vicinities of the two-medium flow region.     

Anisotropic mesh adaptation for numerical solution of boundary value problems

We present an efficient mesh adaptation algorithm that can be successfully applied to numerical solutions of a wide range of 2D problems of physics and engineering described by partial differential equations. We are interested in the numerical solution of a general boundary value problem discretized on triangular grids. We formulate a necessary condition for properties of the triangulation on which the discretization error is below the prescribed tolerance and control this necessary condition by the interpolation error. For a sufficiently smooth function, we recall the strategy how to construct the mesh on which the interpolation error is below the prescribed tolerance. Solving the boundary value problem we apply this strategy to the smoothed approximate solution. The novelty of the method lies in the smoothing procedure that, followed by the anisotropic mesh adaptation (AMA) algorithm, leads to the significant improvement of numerical results. We apply AMA to the numerical solution of an elliptic equation where the exact solution is known and demonstrate practical aspects of the adaptation procedure: how to control the ratio between the longest and the shortest edge of the triangulation and how to control the transition of the coarsest part of the mesh to the finest one if the two length scales of all the triangles are clearly different. An example of the use of AMA for the physically relevant numerical simulation of a geometrically challenging industrial problem (inviscid transonic flow around NACA0012 profile) is presented. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2004.     

An adaptive finite element algorithm with reliable and efficient error control for linear parabolic problems

An efficient and reliable a posteriori error estimate is derived for linear parabolic equations which does not depend on any regularity assumption on the underlying elliptic operator. An adaptive algorithm with variable time-step sizes and space meshes is proposed and studied which, at each time step, delays the mesh coarsening until the final iteration of the adaptive procedure, allowing only mesh and time-step size refinements before. It is proved that at each time step the adaptive algorithm is able to reduce the error indicators (and thus the error) below any given tolerance within a finite number of iteration steps. The key ingredient in the analysis is a new coarsening strategy. Numerical results are presented to show the competitive behavior of the proposed adaptive algorithm.

     

Optimization of arches using genetic algorithm

An optimization procedure is presented for the minimum weight and strain energy optimization for arch structures subjected to constraints on stress, displacement and weight responses. Both thickness and shape variables defining the natural line of the arch are considered. The computer program which is developed in this study can be used to optimize thick, thin and variable thickness curved beams/arches. An automated optimization procedure is adopted which integrates finite element analysis, parametric cubic spline geometry definition, automatic mesh generation and genetic algorithm methods. Several examples are presented to illustrate optimal arch structures with smooth shapes and thickness variations. The changes in the relative contributions of the bending, membrane and shear strain energies are monitored during the whole process of optimization.     

Optimal adaptive grids of least-squares finite element methods in two spatial dimensions

This article concerns a procedure to generate optimal adaptive grids for convection dominated problems in two spatial dimensions based on least-squares finite element approximations. The procedure extends a one dimensional equidistribution principle which minimizes the interpolation error in some norms. The idea is to select two directions which can reflect the physics of the problems and then apply the one dimensional equidistribution principle to the chosen directions. Model problems considered are the two dimensional convection-diffusion problems where boundary and interior layers occur. Numerical results of model problems illustrating the efficiency of the proposed scheme are presented. In addition, to avoid skewed mesh in the optimal grids generated by the algorithm, an unstructured local mesh smoothing will be considered in the least-squares approximations. Comparisons with the Gakerkin finite element method will also be provided.     

A model to simplify 2D triangle meshes with irregular shapes

We present a 2D triangle mesh simplification model which is able to produce high quality approximations of any original planar mesh, regardless of the shape of the original mesh. This method consists of two phases: a self-organizing algorithm and a triangulation algorithm. The self-organizing algorithm is an unsupervised incremental clustering algorithm which provides us a set of nodes representing the best approximation of the original mesh. The triangulation algorithm reconstructs the simplified mesh from the planar points obtained by the self-organizing training process. Some examples are detailed with the purpose of demonstrating the ability of the model to perform the task of simplifying an original mesh with irregular shape.     

Parallel anisotropic mesh adaptivity with dynamic load balancing for cardiac electrophysiology

Simulations in cardiac electrophysiology generally use very fine meshes and small time steps to resolve highly localized wavefronts. This expense motivates the use of mesh adaptivity, which has been demonstrated to reduce the overall computational load. However, even with mesh adaptivity performing such simulations on a single processor is infeasible. Therefore, the adaptivity algorithm must be parallelised. Rather than modifying the sequential adaptive algorithm, the parallel mesh adaptivity method introduced in this paper focuses on dynamic load balancing in response to the local refinement and coarsening of the mesh. In essence, the mesh partition boundary is perturbed away from mesh regions of high relative error, while also balancing the computational load across processes. The parallel scaling of the method when applied to physiologically realistic heart meshes is shown to be good as long as there are enough mesh nodes to distribute over the available parallel processes. It is shown that the new method is dominated by the cost of the sequential adaptive mesh procedure and that the parallel overhead of inter-process data migration represents only a small fraction of the overall cost.     

Anisotropic mesh generation methods based on ACVT and natural metric for anisotropic elliptic equation

Anisotropic meshes are known to be well-suited for problems which exhibit anisotropic solution features.Defning an appropriate metric tensor and designing an efcient algorithm for anisotropic mesh generation are two important aspects of the anisotropic mesh methodology.In this paper,we are concerned with the natural metric tensor for use in anisotropic mesh generation for anisotropic elliptic problems.We provide an algorithm to generate anisotropic meshes under the given metric tensor.We show that the inverse of the anisotropic difusion matrix of the anisotropic elliptic problem is a natural metric tensor for the anisotropic mesh generation in three aspects:better discrete algebraic systems,more accurate fnite element solution and superconvergence on the mesh nodes.Various numerical examples demonstrating the efectiveness are presented.     

Automatic parallel generation of tetrahedral grids by using a domain decomposition approach

An algorithm for the automatic parallel generation of three-dimensional unstructured grids based on geometric domain decomposition is proposed. A software package based on this algorithm is described. Examples of generating meshes for some application problems on a multiprocessor computer are presented. It is shown that the parallel algorithm can significantly (by a factor of several tens) reduce the mesh generation time. Moreover, it can easily generate meshes with as many as 5 × 10⁷ elements, which can hardly be generated sequentially. Issues concerning the speedup and the improvement of the efficiency of the computations and of the quality of the resulting meshes are discussed.     

A one-sweep method in the solution of finite-element equations: An application to the vibration of structures in heavy fluids

A one-sweep method for the numerical solution of finite-element equations is presented. This procedure is especially efficient in computing time and storage when the solution is required at only a few nodes of the finite-element mesh. Furthermore, the method is particularly useful in dealing with problems on infinite or semi-infinite domains. Artificial boundaries must be introduced in such cases, and the one-sweep method affords an extremely efficient algorithm by which the dependence of the solution on the location of these boundaries can be assessed. An application of the method to the vibration of a half-submerged circular cylinder in a heavy fluid is presented.The second author wishes to express his thanks to Professor J. L. Sackman for reviewing this work.(deceased).     

Heuristic algorithm for generating multilevel Cartesian meshes inmultidimensional regions with moving boundaries

Universal algorithm for fully automated generation of multilevel Cartesian mesh in arbitrary planar regions with moving boundaries is developed and discussed in details. It uses multilevel tree technology and heuristic enabling flexible mesh adaptation to changes of boundaries. Efficient mixed coding for mesh storing is presented. Suggested algorithm generates meshes with properties most desirable for computing various field distribution problems. Main parts of elaborated algorithm are generalized for multidimensional meshes.     

Optimality criteria coupled adaptive mesh method for optimal shape design of Stokes flow

An adaptive mesh method combined with the optimality criteria algorithm is applied to optimal shape design problems of fluid dynamics. The shape sensitivity analysis of the cost functional is derived. The optimization problem is solved by a simple but robust optimality criteria algorithm, and an automatic local adaptive mesh refinement method is proposed. The mesh adaptation, with an indicator based on the material distribution information, is itself shown as a shape or topology optimization problem. Taking advantages of this algorithm, the optimal shape design problem concerning fluid flow can be solved with higher resolution of the interface and a minimum of additional expense. Details on the optimization procedure are provided. Numerical results for two benchmark topology optimization problems are provided and compared with those obtained by other methods. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quality mesh generation for molecular skin surfaces using restricted union of balls

Quality surface meshes for molecular models are desirable in the studies of protein shapes and functionalities. However, there is still no robust software that is capable to generate such meshes with good quality. In this paper, we present a Delaunay-based surface triangulation algorithm generating quality surface meshes for the molecular skin model. We expand the restricted union of balls along the surface and generate an ε-sampling of the skin surface incrementally. At the same time, a quality surface mesh is extracted from the Delaunay triangulation of the sample points. The algorithm supports robust and efficient implementation and guarantees the mesh quality and topology as well. Our results facilitate molecular visualization and have made a contribution towards generating quality volumetric tetrahedral meshes for the macromolecules.     

Passerelles volumes finis — éléments finis

The aim of this work is to introduce a new algorithm for the dicretization of second order elliptic operators in the context of finite volume schemes. The technique consists in matching to a finite volume discretization based on a given mesh, a finite element volume representation on the same given mesh. An inverse operator is also built. The results of numerical experiments concerning a system of two-dimensional, nonlinear partial differential equations on a unstructured mesh are presented.     

A new methodology for anisotropic mesh refinement based upon error gradients

We introduce a new strategy for controlling the use of anisotropic mesh refinement based upon the gradients of an a posteriori approximation of the error in a computed finite element solution. The efficiency of this strategy is demonstrated using a simple anisotropic mesh adaption algorithm and the quality of a number of potential a posteriori error estimates is considered.     

Adaptation de maillages non structurés pour des problèmes instationnairesUnstructured mesh adaptation for transient problems

This Note deals with the adaptation of unstructured meshes for transient CFD problems. The proposed approach is based on a new mesh adaptation algorithm and a metric intersection in time procedure suitable to capture such phenomena. More precisely, a new specific loop is inserted in the main adaptation loop to solve a transient fixed point problem. The mesh adaptation stage consists in optimizing the current mesh so as to obtain a unit mesh with respect to this metric. A 2D example is provided to emphasize the efficiency of the proposed method. To cite this article: F. Alauzet et al., C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 335 (2002) 773–778.     

Stochastic Domain Decomposition for Time Dependent Adaptive Mesh Generation

The efficient generation of meshes is an important component in the numerical solution of problems in physics and engineering. Of interest are situations where global mesh quality and a tight coupling to the solution of the physical partial differential equation (PDE) is important. We consider parabolic PDE mesh generation and present a method for the construction of adaptive meshes in two spatial dimensions using stochastic domain decomposition that is suitable for an implementation in a multi- or many-core environment. Methods for mesh generation on periodic domains are also provided. The mesh generator is coupled to a time dependent physical PDE and the system is evolved using an alternating solution procedure. The method uses the stochastic representation of the exact solution of a parabolic linear mesh generator to find the location of an adaptive mesh along the (artificial) subdomain interfaces. The deterministic evaluation of the mesh over each subdomain can then be obtained completely independently using the probabilistically computed solutions as boundary conditions. A small scaling study is provided to demonstrate the parallel performance of this stochastic domain decomposition approach to mesh generation. We demonstrate the approach numerically and compare the mesh obtained with the corresponding single domain mesh using a representative mesh quality measure.     

一类无结构三角网上抛物方程的有限差分区域分解算法

本文讨论了一类在无结构三角网上数值求解二维热传导方程的有限差分区域分解算法．在这个算法中,将通过引进两类不同类型的内界点,将求解区域分裂成若干子区域．一旦内界点处的值被计算出来,其余子区域上的计算可完全并行．本文得到了稳定性条件和最大模误差估计,它表明我们的格式有令人满意的稳定性和较高的收敛阶．