A framework for advancing front techniques of finite element mesh generation

Advancing front techniques are a family of methods for finite element mesh generation that are particularly effective in dealing with complicated boundary geometries. In the first part of this paper, conditions are presented which ensure that any planar aft algorithm that meets these conditions terminates in a finite number of steps with a valid triangulation of the input domain. These conditions are described by specifying a framework of subtasks that can accommodate many aft methods and by prescribing the minimal requirements on each subtask that ensure correctness of an algorithm that conforms to the framework.An important efficiency factor in implementing an aft is the data structure used to represent the unmeshed regions during the execution of the algorithm. In the second part of the paper, we discuss the use of the constrained Delaunay triangulation as an efficient abstract data structure for the unmeshed regions. We indicate how the correctness conditions of the first part of the paper can be met using this representation. In this case, we also discuss the additional requirements on the framework which ensure that the generated mesh is a constrained Delaunay triangulation for the original boundary.The first author has been supported by CERFACS, Toulouse, France. Support was provided to the second author by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and by the Information Technology Research Centre of Ontario.