An automatic adaptive quadrilateral mesh conversion scheme for the gen
eration of adaptive refinement meshes over analytical curved surfaces
is proposed. The starting point of the quadrilateral mesh generator is
a background triangular mesh of the curved surface. By a carefully co
ntrolled process to merge two triangles at a time the triangular mesh
can be completely converted to quadrilaterals. A rapidly graded quadri
lateral mesh with node spacing compatible with the desired element siz
e distribution can be obtained from a well-graded triangular mesh. The
quality of the quadrilateral mesh can be subsequently enhanced by a s
eries of mesh modifications and element shape improvement procedures.
The present scheme can be used in conjunction with an adaptive surface
triangular mesh generator to generate quadrilateral meshes suitable f
or adaptive shell refinement analysis. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.