A boundary focused quadrilateral mesh generation algorithm for multi-material structures

This paper describes a new boundary focused mesh generation algorithm. The algorithm produces quadrilateral meshes from images of multi-material structures. The challenge of meshing such images is to create high quality elements which are aligned with complex material boundaries. The approach proposed in this paper uses the following steps: (1) extract boundaries according to pixel colours; (2) smooth the jagged boundaries; (3) generate geodesic isolines aligned with smoothed boundaries; (4) generate a mesh from the boundaries and isolines; (5) optimize the mesh using the “Pisces” pattern (which is introduced in this paper). Application examples are presented to contrast the reliability and effectiveness of the new algorithm with existing approaches.