Optismoothing: An optimization-driven approach to mesh smoothing (Q1309578)

Creating well-shaped finite elements of the desired type is a critical aspect of mesh generation. This is especially true of automatic mesh generation where irregular mesh topologies are common. This paper deals with a smoothing method which allows improving the shape of existing elements in a mesh. This method, referred to as optismoothing, is based on optimization techniques. Minimizing the distortion throughout a mesh is a natural application of these techniques. The authors use the distortion metric of \textit{A. Oddy, J. Goldak, M. McDill} and \textit{M. Bibby} [A distortion metric for isoparametric finite elements, Trans. Can. Soc. Mech. Eng., No. 38-CSME- 32, Accession No. 2161 (1988)] which depends on Green's strain and which is a direct function of the Jacobian. This metric is capable of computing a continuous scalar evaluation of an element's distortion, and is sensitive to combine stretching and shearing of the element. The conjugate gradient method is chosen as the optimization technique. This method is very well suited to solve this problem. Experience shows that one iteration is usually all that is needed for most applications. The optimization-driven smoothing gives very good results for the analyzed finite element models.