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MeshCleaner: A Generic and Straightforward Algorithm for Cleaning Finite Element Meshes

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Abstract

Mesh cleaning is the procedure of removing duplicate nodes, sequencing the indices of remaining nodes, and then updating the mesh connectivity for a topologically invalid Finite Element mesh. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no previously reported work specifically focused on the cleaning of large Finite Element meshes. In this paper we specifically present a generic and straightforward algorithm, MeshCleaner, for cleaning large Finite Element meshes. The presented mesh cleaning algorithm is composed of (1) the stage of compacting and reordering nodes and (2) the stage of updating mesh topology. The basic ideas for performing the above two stages efficiently both in sequential and in parallel are introduced. Furthermore, one serial and two parallel implementations of the algorithm MeshCleaner are developed on multi-core CPU and/or many-core GPU. To evaluate the performance of our algorithm, three groups of experimental tests are conducted. Experimental results indicate that the algorithm MeshCleaner is capable of cleaning large meshes very efficiently, both in sequential and in parallel. The presented mesh cleaning algorithm MeshCleaner is generic, simple, and practical.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11602235, 51674058 and 41602374), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2015M571081), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2652015065).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geological Engineering, Qinghai University, Xining, China

    Gang Mei & Nengxiong Xu

  2. School of Engineering and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China

    Gang Mei & Nengxiong Xu

  3. Department of Mathematics and Applications “R. Caccioppoli”, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Salvatore Cuomo

  4. Faculty of Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China

    Hong Tian

  5. Academician Pioneering Park, Dalian University, Dalian, China

    Linjun Peng

Authors
  1. Gang Mei
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  2. Salvatore Cuomo
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  3. Hong Tian
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  4. Nengxiong Xu
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  5. Linjun Peng
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Correspondence to Gang Mei.

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Mei, G., Cuomo, S., Tian, H. et al. MeshCleaner: A Generic and Straightforward Algorithm for Cleaning Finite Element Meshes. Int J Parallel Prog 46, 565–583 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10766-017-0507-0

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