Development of a grid-based mesh generation technique and its application to remeshing during the finite element simulation of a metal forming process

An easy and robust grid-based approach is proposed to construct the fully h exahedral mesh in three-dimensional case and its application for the mesh r egeneration or remeshing during the finite element simulation of a metal fo rming process is presented to show the validity and effectiveness of the sc heme. The proposed scheme enables the construction of the provisional mesh by superimposing the regular cubical grid over the object to be meshed and removing the. exterior grid points and cells. Because the constructed provi sional mesh has the discrete rugged boundary that is quite different from t he boundary geometry of the object to be meshed, the nodes on the boundary of the provisional mesh are Projected onto the object boundary. The main di sadvantage of the mesh constructed by grid-based approaches is its severely distorted elements on the boundary owing to the projection of the rugged b oundary onto the object boundary. In order to improve the quality of bounda ry elements, some layers of elements an the boundary surface are constructe d and the nodes are repositioned by mesh smoothing. Consequently, the quali ty of boundary elements is effectively improved.