Delaunay refinement algorithms for triangular mesh generation

  • Authors:

  • Jonathan Richard Shewchuk

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

  • Venue:
  • Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Delaunay refinement is a technique for generating unstructured meshes of triangles for use in interpolation, the finite element method, and the finite volume method. In theory and practice, meshes produced by Delaunay refinement satisfy guaranteed bounds on angles, edge lengths, the number of triangles, and the grading of triangles from small to large sizes. This article presents an intuitive framework for analyzing Delaunay refinement algorithms that unifies the pioneering mesh generation algorithms of L. Paul Chew and Jim Ruppert, improves the algorithms in several minor ways, and most importantly, helps to solve the difficult problem of meshing nonmanifold domains with small angles. Although small angles inherent in the input geometry cannot be removed, one would like to triangulate a domain without creating any new small angles. Unfortunately, this problem is not always soluble. A compromise is necessary. A Delaunay refinement algorithm is presented that can create a mesh in which most angles are 30^o or greater and no angle is smaller than arcsin[(3/2)sin(@f/2)]~(3/4)@f, where @f=