Adaptive Mesh Refinement Algorithms for Parallel Unstructured Finite Element Codes (original) (raw)

Controlled cost of adaptive mesh refinement in practical 3D finite element analysis

Advances in Engineering Software, 2007

In this paper, attention is restricted to mesh adaptivity. Traditionally, the most common mesh adaptive strategies for linear problems are used to reach a prescribed accuracy. This goal is best met with an h-adaptive scheme in combination with an error estimator. In an industrial context, the aim of the mechanical simulations in engineering design is not only to obtain greatest quality but more often a compromise between the desired quality and the computation cost (CPU time, storage, software, competence, human cost, computer used). In this paper we propose the use of alternative mesh refinement with an h-adaptive procedure for 3D elastic problems. The alternative mesh refinement criteria allow to obtain the maximum of accuracy for a prescribed cost. These adaptive strategies are based on a technique of error in constitutive relation (the process could be used with other error estimators) and an efficient adaptive technique which automatically takes into account the steep gradient areas. This work proposes a 3D method of adaptivity with the latest version of the INRIA automatic mesh generator GAMHIC3D.

A Robust and Scalable Software Library for Parallel Adaptive Refinement on Unstructured Meshes

The design and implementation of Pyramid, a software library for performing parallel adaptive mesh refinement (PAMR) on unstructured meshes, is described. This software library can be easily used in a variety of unstructured parallel computational applications, including parallel finite element, parallel finite volume, and parallel visualization applications using triangular or tetrahedral meshes. The library contains a suite of well-designed and efficiently implemented modules that perform operations in a typical PAMR process. Among these are mesh quality control during successive parallel adaptive refinement (typically guided by a local-error estimator), parallel load-balancing, and parallel mesh partitioning using the ParMeTiS partitioner. The Pyramid library is implemented in Fortran 90 with an interface to the Message-Passing Interface (MPI) library, supporting code efficiency, modularity, and portability. An EM waveguide filter application, adaptively refined using the Pyramid...

Parallel adaptive mesh refinement for incompressible flow problems

Computers & Fluids, 2013

The present article describes a simple element-driven strategy for the conforming refinement of simplicial finite element meshes in a distributed environment. The proposed algorithm is effective both for local adaptive refinement and for the division of all the elements within an existing mesh. We aim to provide sufficient detail to allow the practical implementation of the algorithm, which can be coded with minimal effort provided that a distributed linear algebra library is available. The proposed refinement strategy is composed of three basic components: a global splitting strategy, an elemental splitting procedure and an error estimation technique, which are combined so to guarantee obtaining a conformant refined mesh. A number of benchmark examples show the capabilities of the proposed method. Error is estimated for the incompressible fluid-flow benchmarks using a novel indicator based on the computation of the sub-scale velocity.

Development of an object-oriented finite element program with adaptive mesh refinement for multi-physics applications

Advances in Engineering Software, 2010

ABSTRACT In this paper, an object-oriented framework for numerical analysis of multi-physics applications is presented. The framework is divided into several basic sets of classes that enable the code segments to be built according to the type of problem to be solved. Fortran 2003 was used in the development of this finite element program due to its advantages for scientific and engineering programming and its new object-oriented features. The program was developed with h-type adaptive mesh refinement, and it was tested for several classical cases involving heat transfer, fluid mechanics and structural mechanics. The test cases show that the adaptive mesh is refined only in the localization region where the feature gradient is relatively high. The overall mesh refinement and the h-adaptive mesh refinement were justified with respect to the computational accuracy and the CPU time cost. Both methods can improve the computational accuracy with the refinement of mesh. The overall mesh refinement causes the CPU time cost to greatly increase as the mesh is refined. However, the CPU time cost does not increase very much with the increase of the level of h-adaptive mesh refinement. The CPU time cost can be saved by up to 90%, especially for the simulated system with a large number of elements and nodes.

Adaptive Semi-Structured Mesh Refinement Techniques for the Finite Element Method

Applied Sciences, 2021

The adaptive mesh techniques applied to the Finite Element Method have continuously been an active research line. However, these techniques are usually applied to tetrahedra. Here, we use the triangular prismatic element as the discretization shape for a Finite Element Method code with adaptivity. The adaptive process consists of three steps: error estimation, marking, and refinement. We adapt techniques already applied for other shapes to the triangular prisms, showing the differences here in detail. We use five different marking strategies, comparing the results obtained with different parameters. We adapt these strategies to a conformation process necessary to avoid hanging nodes in the resulting mesh. We have also applied two special rules to ensure the quality of the refined mesh. We show the effect of these rules with the Method of Manufactured Solutions and numerical results to validate the implementation introduced.

Highly parallel structured adaptive mesh refinement using parallel language-based approaches

Parallel Computing, 2001

Adaptive Mesh Re®nement (AMR) calculations carried out on structured meshes play an exceedingly important role in several areas of science and engineering. This is so not just because AMR techniques allow us to carry out calculations very eciently but also because they model very precisely the multi-scale fashion in which nature itself works. Many AMR applications are also amongst the most computationally intensive calculations undertaken making it necessary to use parallel supercomputers for their solution. While class library-based approaches are being attempted for parallel AMR we point out here that recent advances in the Fortran 90/95 standard and the OpenMP standard now make it possible to carry out highly parallel AMR calculations using language-based approaches. The language-based approaches oer several advantages over library-based approaches, the two principal ones being portability across parallel platforms and the best possible utilization of Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) hardware on machines that have such hardware. They also free up the applications scientist from being constrained by the static features of a class library. The choice of Fortran also ensures maximal reuse of pre-existing Fortran 77 applications and full Fortran 77-based processing eciency on each computational node. Our implementation of the ideas presented here in the ®rst author's RIEMANN framework essentially permits any serial, uniform grid, stencil-based Fortran code to be turned into a parallel AMR code. In this paper we ®rst describe our strategy for using Fortran 90 in an object-oriented fashion. This permits AMR applications to be expressed in terms of familiar abstractions that are natural to the www.elsevier.com/locate/parco Parallel Computing 27 (2001) 37±70 (D.S. Balsara), nortonc@bryce.jpl.nasa.gov (C.D. Norton). 0167-8191/01/$ -see front matter Ó 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 6 7 -8 1 9 1 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 8 8 -0