Hexahedral Mesh Matching: Converting non-conforming hexahedral-to-hexahedral interfaces into conforming interfaces

• Published in: International journal for numerical methods in engineering 2010-06, Vol.82 (12), p.1475-1509
• Main Authors: Staten, Matthew L., Shepherd, Jason F., Ledoux, Franck, Shimada, Kenji
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Exact sciences and technology; finite element analysis; hexahedra; Mathematics; mesh generation; Methods of scientific computing (including symbolic computation, algebraic computation); multi-point constraint; non-conforming interfaces; Numerical analysis. Scientific computation; pillowing; Sciences and techniques of general use
• ISSN: 0029-5981; 1097-0207
• DOI: 10.1002/nme.2800

This paper presents a new method, called Mesh Matching, for handling non‐conforming hexahedral‐to‐hexahedral interfaces for finite element analysis. Mesh Matching modifies the hexahedral element topology on one or both sides of the interface until there is a one‐to‐one pairing of finite element nodes, edges and quadrilaterals on the interface surfaces, allowing mesh entities to be merged into a single conforming mesh. Element topology is modified using hexahedral dual operations, including pillowing, sheet extraction, dicing and column collapsing. The primary motivation for this research is to simplify the generation of unstructured all‐hexahedral finite element meshes. Mesh Matching relaxes global constraint propagation which currently hinders hexahedral meshing of large assemblies, and limits its extension to parallel processing. As a secondary benefit, by providing conforming mesh interfaces, Mesh Matching provides an alternative to artificial constraints such as tied contacts and multi‐point constraints. The quality of the resultant conforming hexahedral mesh is high and the increase in number of elements is moderate. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.