Parallel three-dimensional mesh generation on distributed memory MIMD computers

This paper discusses the development of an automatic mesh generation technique designed to operate effectively on multiple instruction multiple data (MIMD) parallel computers. The meshing approach is hierarchical, that is, model entities are meshed after their boundaries have been meshed. Focus is on the region meshing step. An octree is constructed to serve as a localization tool and for efficiency. The tree is also key to the efficient parallelization of the meshing process since it supports the distribution of load to processors. The parallel mesh generation procedure repartitions the domain to be meshed and applies on processor face removals until all face removals with local data have been performed. The portion of the domain to be meshed remaining is dynamically repartitioned at the octant level using an Inertial Recursive Bisection method and local face removals are reperformed. Migration of a terminal octant involves migration of the octant data and the octant's mesh faces and/or mesh regions. Results show relatively good speed-ups for parallel face removals on small numbers of processors. Once the three-dimensional mesh has been generated, mesh regions may be scattered across processors. Therefore, a final dynamic repartitioning step is applied at the region level to produce a partition ready for finite element analysis.

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