Developments and trends in three-dimensional mesh generation

An intense research effort over the last few years has produced several competing and apparently diverse methods for generating meshes. Recent progress is reviewed and the central themes are emphasized which form a solid foundation for future developments in mesh generation

Error analysis of the Galerkin FEM in L 2 -based norms for problems with layers: On the importance, conception and realization of balancing

In the present thesis it is shown that the most natural choice for a norm for the analysis of the Galerkin FEM, namely the energy norm, fails to capture the boundary layer functions arising in certain reaction-diffusion problems. In view of a formal Definition such reaction-diffusion problems are not singularly perturbed with respect to the energy norm. This observation raises two questions: 1. Does the Galerkin finite element method on standard meshes yield satisfactory approximations for the reaction-diffusion problem with respect to the energy norm? 2. Is it possible to strengthen the energy norm in such a way that the boundary layers are captured and that it can be reconciled with a robust finite element method, i.e.~robust with respect to this strong norm? In Chapter 2 we answer the first question. We show that the Galerkin finite element approximation converges uniformly in the energy norm to the solution of the reaction-diffusion problem on standard shape regular meshes. These results are completely new in two dimensions and are confirmed by numerical experiments. We also study certain convection-diffusion problems with characterisitc layers in which some layers are not well represented in the energy norm. These theoretical findings, validated by numerical experiments, have interesting implications for adaptive methods. Moreover, they lead to a re-evaluation of other results and methods in the literature. In 2011 Lin and Stynes were the first to devise a method for a reaction-diffusion problem posed in the unit square allowing for uniform a priori error estimates in an adequate so-called balanced norm. Thus, the aforementioned second question is answered in the affirmative. Obtaining a non-standard weak formulation by testing also with derivatives of the test function is the key idea which is related to the H^1-Galerkin methods developed in the early 70s. Unfortunately, this direct approach requires excessive smoothness of the finite element space considered. Lin and Stynes circumvent this problem by rewriting their problem into a first order system and applying a mixed method. Now the norm captures the layers. Therefore, they need to be resolved by some layer-adapted mesh. Lin and Stynes obtain optimal error estimates with respect to the balanced norm on Shishkin meshes. However, their method is unable to preserve the symmetry of the problem and they rely on the Raviart-Thomas element for H^div-conformity. In Chapter 4 of the thesis a new continuous interior penalty (CIP) method is present, embracing the approach of Lin and Stynes in the context of a broken Sobolev space. The resulting method induces a balanced norm in which uniform error estimates are proven. In contrast to the mixed method the CIP method uses standard Q_2-elements on the Shishkin meshes. Both methods feature improved stability properties in comparison with the Galerkin FEM. Nevertheless, the latter also yields approximations which can be shown to converge to the true solution in a balanced norm uniformly with respect to diffusion parameter. Again, numerical experiments are conducted that agree with the theoretical findings. In every finite element analysis the approximation error comes into play, eventually. If one seeks to prove any of the results mentioned on an anisotropic family of Shishkin meshes, one will need to take advantage of the different element sizes close to the boundary. While these are ideally suited to reflect the solution behavior, the error analysis is more involved and depends on anisotropic interpolation error estimates. In Chapter 3 the beautiful theory of Apel and Dobrowolski is extended in order to obtain anisotropic interpolation error estimates for macro-element interpolation. This also sheds light on fundamental construction principles for such operators. The thesis introduces a non-standard finite element space that consists of biquadratic C^1-finite elements on macro-elements over tensor product grids, which can be viewed as a rectangular version of the C^1-Powell-Sabin element. As an application of the general theory developed, several interpolation operators mapping into this FE space are analyzed. The insight gained can also be used to prove anisotropic error estimates for the interpolation operator induced by the well-known C^1-Bogner-Fox-Schmidt element. A special modification of Scott-Zhang type and a certain anisotropic interpolation operator are also discussed in detail. The results of this chapter are used to approximate the solution to a recation-diffusion-problem on a Shishkin mesh that features highly anisotropic elements. The obtained approximation features continuous normal derivatives across certain edges of the mesh, enabling the analysis of the aforementioned CIP method.:Notation 1 Introduction 2 Galerkin FEM error estimation in weak norms 2.1 Reaction-diffusion problems 2.2 A convection-diffusion problem with weak characteristic layers and a Neumann outflow condition 2.3 A mesh that resolves only part of the exponential layer and neglects the weaker characteristic layers 2.3.1 Weakly imposed characteristic boundary conditions 2.4 Numerical experiments 2.4.1 A reaction-diffusion problem with boundary layers 2.4.2 A reaction-diffusion problem with an interior layer 2.4.3 A convection-diffusion problem with characteristic layers and a Neumann outflow condition 2.4.4 A mesh that resolves only part of the exponential layer and neglects the weaker characteristic layers 3 Macro-interpolation on tensor product meshes 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Univariate C1-P2 macro-element interpolation 3.3 C1-Q2 macro-element interpolation on tensor product meshes 3.4 A theory on anisotropic macro-element interpolation 3.5 C1 macro-interpolation on anisotropic tensor product meshes 3.5.1 A reduced macro-element interpolation operator 3.5.2 The full C1-Q2 interpolation operator 3.5.3 A C1-Q2 macro-element quasi-interpolation operator of Scott-Zhang type on tensor product meshes 3.5.4 Summary: anisotropic C1 (quasi-)interpolation error estimates 3.6 An anisotropic macro-element of tensor product type 3.7 Application of macro-element interpolation on a tensor product Shishkin mesh 4 Balanced norm results for reaction-diffusion 4.1 The balanced finite element method of Lin and Stynes 4.2 A C0 interior penalty method 4.3 Galerkin finite element method 4.3.1 L2-norm error bounds and supercloseness 4.3.2 Maximum-norm error bounds 4.4 Numerical verification 4.5 Further developments and summary Reference

An overlapped grid method for multigrid, finite volume/difference flow solvers: MaGGiE

The objective is to develop a domain decomposition method via overlapping/embedding the component grids, which is to be used by upwind, multi-grid, finite volume solution algorithms. A computer code, given the name MaGGiE (Multi-Geometry Grid Embedder) is developed to meet this objective. MaGGiE takes independently generated component grids as input, and automatically constructs the composite mesh and interpolation data, which can be used by the finite volume solution methods with or without multigrid convergence acceleration. Six demonstrative examples showing various aspects of the overlap technique are presented and discussed. These cases are used for developing the procedure for overlapping grids of different topologies, and to evaluate the grid connection and interpolation data for finite volume calculations on a composite mesh. Time fluxes are transferred between mesh interfaces using a trilinear interpolation procedure. Conservation losses are minimal at the interfaces using this method. The multi-grid solution algorithm, using the coaser grid connections, improves the convergence time history as compared to the solution on composite mesh without multi-gridding

Fast Spherical Drawing of Triangulations: An Experimental Study of Graph Drawing Tools

We consider the problem of computing a spherical crossing-free geodesic drawing of a planar graph: this problem, as well as the closely related spherical parameterization problem, has attracted a lot of attention in the last two decades both in theory and in practice, motivated by a number of applications ranging from texture mapping to mesh remeshing and morphing. Our main concern is to design and implement a linear time algorithm for the computation of spherical drawings provided with theoretical guarantees. While not being aesthetically pleasing, our method is extremely fast and can be used as initial placer for spherical iterative methods and spring embedders. We provide experimental comparison with initial placers based on planar Tutte parameterization. Finally we explore the use of spherical drawings as initial layouts for (Euclidean) spring embedders: experimental evidence shows that this greatly helps to untangle the layout and to reach better local minima

Identification of vortex in unstructured mesh with graph neural networks

Deep learning has been employed to identify flow characteristics from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) databases to assist the researcher to better understand the flow field, to optimize the geometry design and to select the correct CFD configuration for corresponding flow characteristics. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is one of the most popular algorithms used to extract and identify flow features. However its use, without any additional flow field interpolation, is limited to the simple domain geometry and regular meshes which limits its application to real industrial cases where complex geometry and irregular meshes are usually used. Aiming at the aforementioned problems, we present a Graph Neural Network (GNN) based model with U-Net architecture to identify the vortex in CFD results on unstructured meshes. The graph generation and graph hierarchy construction using algebraic multigrid method from CFD meshes are introduced. A vortex auto-labeling method is proposed to label vortex regions in 2D CFD meshes. We precise our approach by firstly optimizing the input set on CNNs, then benchmarking current GNN kernels against CNN model and evaluating the performances of GNN kernels in terms of classification accuracy, training efficiency and identified vortex morphology. Finally, we demonstrate the adaptability of our approach to unstructured meshes and generality to unseen cases with different turbulence models at different Reynolds numbers.Comment: Accepted by the journal Computers & Fluid

Parallel load balancing strategy for Volume-of-Fluid methods on 3-D unstructured meshes

© 2016. This version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/l Volume-of-Fluid (VOF) is one of the methods of choice to reproduce the interface motion in the simulation of multi-fluid flows. One of its main strengths is its accuracy in capturing sharp interface geometries, although requiring for it a number of geometric calculations. Under these circumstances, achieving parallel performance on current supercomputers is a must. The main obstacle for the parallelization is that the computing costs are concentrated only in the discrete elements that lie on the interface between fluids. Consequently, if the interface is not homogeneously distributed throughout the domain, standard domain decomposition (DD) strategies lead to imbalanced workload distributions. In this paper, we present a new parallelization strategy for general unstructured VOF solvers, based on a dynamic load balancing process complementary to the underlying DD. Its parallel efficiency has been analyzed and compared to the DD one using up to 1024 CPU-cores on an Intel SandyBridge based supercomputer. The results obtained on the solution of several artificially generated test cases show a speedup of up to similar to 12x with respect to the standard DD, depending on the interface size, the initial distribution and the number of parallel processes engaged. Moreover, the new parallelization strategy presented is of general purpose, therefore, it could be used to parallelize any VOF solver without requiring changes on the coupled flow solver. Finally, note that although designed for the VOF method, our approach could be easily adapted to other interface-capturing methods, such as the Level-Set, which may present similar workload imbalances. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. Allrights reserved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Tee failure of carbon fibre reinforced plastic laminated plates under biaxial stresses

A new biaxial test procedure, known as the 'plate bending method' is investigated for thin multilayered generally orthotropic laminated plate structures. The method is evaluated with reference to the four criteria for a satisfactory biaxial test. A number of experiments have been performed to determine the applicability of the criteria to the new method. Surface strains, transverse displacements and visual observations have been recorded, from which the bending behaviour and failure mechanisms in the experiments are examined. A classical 2-dimensional thin plate finite element analysis has been developed to predict the stresses generated in the small (linear) and large (non-linear) deformation domains. To minimise computing effort in the analyse of non-linear bending, the formulation omitted the effects of shear deformation, shear stresses, material non-linearities and the exact position of the neutral axis. The omission of these factors has been examined and it is shown that the individual errors are small. Analytical solutions for simple isotropic, and, where available, laminated plate bending examples, have been used to establish the limitations of the finite element analysis. Numerical results have been compared with the measured surface strains and transverse displacements. From the comparison it is shown that the plate bending method can be accurately modelled by the linear analysis. However, the non-linear analysis is shown to be inaccurate when predicting the measured bending for reasons which are discussed