Universal meshes: A method for triangulating planar curved domains immersed in nonconforming meshes

We introduce a new method to triangulate planar, curved domains that transforms a specific collection of triangles in a background mesh to conform to the boundary. In the process, no new vertices are introduced, and connectivities of triangles are left unaltered. The method relies on a novel way of parameterizing an immersed boundary over a collection of nearby edges with its closest point projection. To guarantee its robustness, we require that the domain be C-2-regular, the background mesh be sufficiently refined near the boundary, and that specific angles in triangles near the boundary be strictly acute. The method can render both straight-edged and curvilinear triangulations for the immersed domain. The latter includes curved triangles that conform exactly to the immersed boundary, and ones constructed with isoparametric mappings to interpolate the boundary at select points. High-order finite elements constructed over these curved triangles achieve optimal accuracy, which has customarily proven difficult in numerical schemes that adopt nonconforming meshes. Aside from serving as a quick and simple tool for meshing planar curved domains with complex shapes, the method provides significant advantages for simulating problems with moving boundaries and in numerical schemes that require iterating over the geometry of domains. With no conformity requirements, the same background mesh can be adopted to triangulate a large family of domains immersed in it, including ones realized over several updates during the coarse of simulating problems with moving boundaries. We term such a background mesh as a universal mesh for the family of domains it can be used to triangulate. Universal meshes hence facilitate a framework for finite element calculations over evolving domains while using only fixed background meshes. Furthermore, because the evolving geometry can be approximated with any desired order, numerical solutions can be computed with high-order accuracy. We present demonstrative examples using universal meshes to simulate the interaction of rigid bodies with Stokesian fluids. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.