Topology Abstraction of Surface Models for Three-Dimensional Grid Generation

Surface grid generation and the subsequent volume grid generation is the key to unstructured grid-based computational simulation. The baseline entities of the surface models under consideration for use with the proposed surface grid generator are curves and surfaces. There is a necessity to establish a topology relation between the curves and surfaces, prior to a surface gridding process. The present paper addresses issues related to this topology abstraction. Effort has also been made to generally discuss how to bridge the gap between CAD modelling and surface gridding. The proposed procedures have been incorporated into an Interactive Geometry Utility Environment (IGUE). The IGUE is a sub-environment of a Parallel Simulation User Environment (PSUE), which has been developed for unstructured grid-based computational simulation. Arbitrary computer application software can be integrated into the environment to provide a multi-disciplinary engineering analysis capability within one unified computational framework. Examples of computational applications have been included in the present paper, to demonstrate the use of the PSUE and geometry preparation procedure with an emphasis of topology abstraction.