Current Issues and Trends in Meshing and Geometric Processing for Computational Engineering Analyses

Abstract

This paper presents the current issues and trends in meshing and geometric processing, core tasks in the preparation stage of computational engineering analyses. In product development, computational simulation of product functionality and manufacturing process have contributed significantly toward improving the quality of a product, shortening the time-to-market and reducing the cost of the product and manufacturing process. The computational simulation can predict various physical behaviors of a target object or system, including its structural, thermal, fluid, dynamic, and electro-magnetic behaviors. In industry, the computer-aided engineering (CAE) software packages have been the driving force behind the ever-increasing usage of computational engineering analyses. While these tools have been improved continuously since their inception in the early 1960s, the demand for more complex computational simulation has grown significantly in recent years, creating some major shortfalls in the capability of current CAE tools. This paper first discusses the current trends of computational engineering analyses and then focuses on two areas of such shortfalls: meshing and geometric processing, critical tasks required in the preparation stage of engineering analyses that use common numerical methods such as the finite element method and the boundary element method.