A framework for advancing front techniques of finite element mesh generation (Q1899932)

Advancing front techniques (AFT) for the finite element mesh generation on two-dimensional domains are discussed. They form a family of methods which is particularly suitable for domains with complicated boundary or interface geometries: a triangulation is carried out iteratively from the given boundary into the interior of the domain. The authors first give a short description of the AFT methods, followed by the presentation of a framework for AFT algorithms, a so called polyalgorithm. Minimal requirements of the subtasks of this polyalgorithm are established which ensure termination with a triangulation of the input domain. The second part is devoted to the data structures used. The authors propose a representation of the connected components of the unmeshed region in every iteration step by its constrained Delaunay triangulation. It is shown that this representation is efficient in the sense that it easily provides information needed in the subtasks of the polyalgorithm.