Locally refined tetrahedral mesh generation based on advancing front technique with optimization and smoothing scheme

In this paper, a locally refined tetrahedral mesh generation algorithm based on advancing front technique using optimization scheme with a non-uniform trial height has been developed for three dimensional forming simulations to improve the quality of the local mesh system and computational efficiency. To generate locally refined surface elements, the refinement region was identified by checking the local affective strain rate and minimum interior angle of a surface element, respectively. In addition, a limiting value for the edge length of the tetrahedron was introduced to avoid generation of extremely small triangular surface elements. The developed scheme was applied for numerical simulations of indentation and spur gear and connecting rod forging. The computational results indicate that the currently developed algorithm was successful in generating better mesh system to finish numerical simulations with relatively shorter computation time compared to the previous scheme with a uniform trial height available in the literature. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.