A finite element method for three-dimensional unstructured grid smoothing

The finite element method is applied to grid smoothing in three-dimensional geometry, generalizing earlier results obtained for planar geometry. The underlying set of equations for the Cartesian components of grid coordinates, based on the notion of harmonic coordinates, has a natural variational formulation. To estimate the target metric tensor that drives the elliptic grid equations, the metric tensor components are computed on a coarse-grained grid. Numerical examples illustrating the proposed approach are presented together with results from the smoothness functional, which is used to measure the quality of the resulting grid. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.