Automatic generation of hexahedral meshes for volumes with non-planar surfaces using the multi-sweeping method

Abstract

One of the most used algorithms to generate hexahedral meshes for extrusion volumes is the multi-sweeping method. The algorithm decomposes the geometry into many-to-one sub-volumes and then meshes each sub-volume separately. However, the quality of the final mesh depends on the decomposition process. First, the location of inner nodes created during the decomposition process may induce bad quality elements. To avoid this drawback, we propose a three-stage decomposition process to locate those nodes. Second, the imprinting process is not robust when dealing with non-planar surfaces. For this reason, we introduce the new concept of the computational domain. The computational domain is a planar representation of the levels of the geometry. In this way, we improve the operations needed to perform imprints.