Sheet-Based Hexahedral Mesh Generation

Historically, hexahedral finite element mesh generation has required significant geometric decomposition with the resulting consequence that generating hexahedral meshes can be extremely difficult to perform and automate and the process often takes several orders of magnitude longer in time to complete than current methods for generating tetrahedral meshes. In this work, we present methods for generating and modifying hexahedral meshes based on direct manipulation of the hexahedral sheets underlying a given hexahedral mesh. Using direct sheet-based techniques, we can generate hexahedral meshes in complex parts with significantly less decomposition of the original geometry over traditional methods.