Extracting Geometrically Continuous Isosurfaces from Adaptive Mesh Refinement Data

Author(s): Fang, David; Weber, Gunther H.; Childs, Hank; Brugger, Eric S.; Hamann, Bernd; Joy, Ken | Abstract: We present a method for avoiding cracks in isosurfaces extracted from adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) data. By combining several rectilinear grids of different resolution, AMR methods substantially reduce storage and computation requirements to accurately represent and simulate complicated data and phenomena. AMR data consist of grids of different resolution. As a result discontinuities (''hanging nodes'') arise in dependent field variables at the interfaces of different resolution mesh elements. These discontinuities can result in cracks in isosurfaces extracted for a specific value of a dependent scalar variable. We describe a method for creating transition regions'' between grids of different resolution. These regions are composed of pyramid elements that allow us to avoid crack formation during isosurface extraction.