Local modification of meshes for adaptive and/or multigrid finite-element methods

Abstract A mesh generation approach that allows the local modification of meshes of simplices is reviewed and discussed. The generation and modification of sequences of nested irregular grids, as needed for multigrid algorithms in the adaptive finite-element setting, can also be managed. In 2 dimensions the meshes constructed are guaranteed to be nondegenerate and smooth. Empirical evidence has shown the 3D algorithm is in practice a powerful and realiable tool for mesh refinement.