Repairing Unstructured, Triangular Mesh Intersections

McLaurin, D., Blades, E. L., Remotigue, M., & Marcum, D. (2011). Repairing Unstructured, Triangular Mesh Intersections. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering. Online, Online. DOI:10.1002/nme.4385.

Computational analysis and design has become a fundamental part of product research, development, and manufacture in aerospace, automotive, and other industries. In general the success of the specific application depends heavily on the accuracy and consistency of the computational model used. The aim of this work is to reduce the time needed to prepare geometry for mesh generation. This will be accomplished by developing tools that semi-automatically repair discrete data. Providing a level of automation to the process of repairing large, complex problems in discrete data will significantly accelerate the grid generation process. The developed algorithms are meant to offer semi-automated solution to a complicated geometrical problem — specifically discrete mesh intersection. The intersection-repair strategy presented here focuses on repairing the intersection in-place as opposed to re-discretizing the intersecting geometries. Combining robust, efficient methods of detecting intersections and then repairing intersecting geometries in-place produces a significant improvement over techniques used in current literature. The result of this intersection process is a non-manifold, non-intersecting geometry that is free of duplicate and degenerate geometry. Results are presented showing the accuracy and consistency of the intersection repair tool.