Some aspects of parametric surface meshing

In many computational processes involving the finite element method, the domain to be meshed is defined by a set of contiguous parametric surfaces (this is the case for instance in CAD environments). In this context, the mesh must satisfy two fundamental conditions, namely: approximate the surface as accurately as possible, and contain elements having the highest possible quality. In this paper, definitions are given to measure distance deviations (denoted by A(0)) and angle deviations (A(1)) between the mesh and the exact surface. Also, isotropic or anisotropic sizing functions are specified for generating quality meshes while bounding A(0) and/or A(1)deviations. These size specifications have been tested on many industrial models, and the meshes generated show the pertinency of this approach. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.