Q-Morph: An indirect approach to advancing front quad meshing

Q-Morph is a new algorithm for generating all-quadrilateral meshes on bound ed three-dimensional surfaces. After first triangulating the surface,the tr iangles are systematically transformed to create an all-quadrilateral mesh. An advancing front algorithm determines the sequence of triangle transform ations. Quadrilaterals are formed by using existing edges in the triangulat ion, by inserting additional nodes, or by performing local transformations to the triangles. A method typically used for recovering the boundary of a Delaunay mesh is used on interior triangles to recover quadrilateral edges. Any number of triangles may be merged to form a single quadrilateral. Topo logical clean-up and smoothing are used to improve final element quality. Q -Morph generates well-aligned rows of quadrilaterals parallel to the bounda ry of the domain while maintaining a limited number of irregular internal n odes. The proposed method also offers the advantage of avoiding expensive i ntersection calculations commonly associated with advancing front procedure s. A series of examples of Q-Morph meshes are also presented to demonstrate the versatility of the proposed method. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & So ns, Ltd.