phyllis@utcsrgv.UUCP (Phyllis Eve Bregman) (11/28/83)
UofT Department of Computer Science Seminar Schedule for the week of November 28th 1983 Thursday, December 1st, 3:00 P.M., GB248: Professor R.B. Simpson, Department of Computer Science, University of Waterloo: "Finite element mesh generation for complex regions of the plane". ABSTRACT: The goal of automatic discretization for problems involving partial differential equations is pursued in the finite element method by combining the capability to triangulate regions of the plane with the method's technique for generating discrete equations for general triangulations. Hence a subgoal is to provide a mesh generation capability that is as automatic, general, and robust as the other components of the method, e.g. local stiffness matrix generation, or sparse matrix computations. We present a method for triangulating regions with boundaries made up of one or more simple polygonal curves that attempt to serve this subgoal. In this context, a region has a complicated shape: if there is a large variation in the lengths of its boundary segments and if a high proportion of its angles are not convex. The method presented involves decomposing the region into convex subregions using computational geometry techniques, followed by further decomposition, based on desired triangle size distribution. -- Phyllis Eve Bregman CSRG, Univ. of Toronto {decvax,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,utzoo}!utcsrgv!phyllis