Automated interrogation and adaptive subdivision of shape using medial axis transform

We present a method for the generation of coarse and fine finite element meshes on multiply connected surfaces. Our method is based on the medial axis transform (MAT) which is employed to decompose a complex shape into topologically simple subdomains. One important property of our approach is that MAT is effectively employed to automatically extract some important shape characteristics and their length scales. Using this technique, we can create a coarse subdivision of a complex surface and select local element size to generate fine triangular meshes within individual subregions. The MAT allows us to carry out these processes in an automated manner. Thus, our approach can lead to integration of automated finite element (FE) mesh generation schemes into existing FE preprocessing systems. We also briefly discuss several design and analysis applications, which include adaptive surface approximations and adaptive h- and p-version finite element analysis (FEA) processes, in order to demonstrate our method.