Generating contours on FEM/BEM higher-order surfaces using Java 3D textures

An efficient technique to visualize primary and secondary results for combined finite element method/boundary element method models as contours is presented. The technique is based on dividing higher-order surfaces into triangles and on using texture interpolation to produce contour plots. Since results of high accuracy with significant gradients can be obtained using sparse meshes of boundary elements and finite elements, special attention is devoted to element face subdivision. Subdivision density is defined on the basis of both face edge curvature and ranges of result fields over element faces. Java 3D API is employed for code development.