Fine-grained parallel algorithm for unstructured surface mesh generation

•The proposed parallel algorithm exploits the parallelism within the meshing process of a single surface.•The proposed domain decomposition approach ensures no small inter-domain angles.•The proposed parallel meshing algorithm fixes the inter-domain boundary without compromising mesh quality.•The developed parallel preprocessing pipeline consumes minutes to prepare a mesh containing hundreds of millions of tetrahedral elements.

A parallel surface meshing algorithm is proposed by exploiting the parallelism within the meshing process of a surface, which is more efficient than the conventional scheme that meshes surfaces individually. One integral part is the domain decomposition approach adopted, which ensures no small inter-domain angles; therefore, the parallel meshing procedure can fix the inter-domain boundary without compromising mesh quality. Combining the parallel surface mesher with the parallel tetrahedral mesher and improver developed previously, a parallel preprocessing pipeline for large-scale simulations is set up. It only consumes minutes to prepare a mesh containing hundreds of millions of elements.