FULLY-AUTOMATIC 2-DIMENSIONAL MESH GENERATION USING NORMAL OFFSETTING

A technique, based on a normal offsetting procedure, for the fully automatic generation of two dimensional meshes suitable for finite element analysis is presented. The method positions nodes by first meshing the geometric entities that compose the object boundary, then offsetting those nodal locations along vectors normal to the boundary geometry. The offset row of nodes is processed to ensure a good nodal spacing appropriate for generating well shaped elements. Following processing, the new row is offset again and the cycle is repeated until the entire area is filled with nodes. The boundary based technique ensures good quality element shapes for analysis in critical boundary regions and facilitates applications involving integration of mesh generation with design geometry databases. Nodal locations are calculated based on local parameters avoiding the higher order time complexities associated with global calculations. A technique for controlling mesh density by overlaying an independent mesh density function on the geometry is also presented as part of the method. This approach allows mesh density to be automatically controlled by a variety of factors, such as previous analysis results, that are external to the actual mesh generation process. The independent nature of the function method allows different sources of density information to be used interchangeably without modification to the mesh generation procedure.