Surface mesh sizing control

A method is presented for controlling element sizes on the interior of area s during surface meshing. A Delaunay background mesh is defined over which natural neighbour interpolation, a neighbourhood-based interpolation scheme , is used to generate a sizing function. The sizing function may be used to interpolate element sizes, anisotropic stretching parameters or other surf ace characteristics required during meshing. A brief description of natural neighbour interpolation is included and the sizing results obtained from t his interpolation method are compared to those obtained using linear interp olation. Three specific applications are presented that utilize the sizing function, namely boundary layer meshing, surface curvature refinement and a nisotropic mesh generation. For these applications, criteria used for augme nting the sizing function based on insertion of additional interior vertice s into the background mesh are discussed. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & S ons, Ltd.