A 3-D FINITE-ELEMENT MESH GENERATOR FOR COMPLEX VOLUMES

A 3-D mesh generator for finite element analysis of electromagnetic fi eld problems has been developed. The software is capable of handling c omplex topologies such as the organs of the human body. The grid is op timized by performing Delaunay correction. The use of digital image pr ocessing techniques is suggested to extract topological information fr om images. This information is used for identifying the regions of the model by placing initial nodes on the surfaces. An application exampl e shows a simplified model of the human thorax created using the grid generator. It should be noticed that this problem includes most of the difficulties encountered in 3-D mesh generation for the finite elemen t method.