A linearly constrained optimization problem for planar grid generation

We consider the problem of planar grid generation. This problem can be easily reformulated as an unconstrained optimization problem with the usual variational method. This is a very simple technique to produce grids on planar domains, but it cannot be used in automatic grid generation codes. As a matter of fact, its formulation depends on some parameters, whose right value can disagree considerably among different domains. A simple modification of the variational method is proposed. This modification is mainly based on a linearly constrained optimization problem and it gives a significant increase of the robustness of the method.