The Adaptive Thin Shell Tetrahedral Mesh

Kenny Erleben, Henrik Dohlmann, Jon Sporring

Abstract:
Tetrahedral meshes are often used for simulating deformable objects. Unlike engineering disciplines, computer graphics is biased towards stable, robust and fast methods, instead of accuracy. In that spirit we present an approach for building an adaptive inward shell of the surface of an object. The goal is to device a simple and fast algorithm capable of building a topologically sound tetrahedral mesh. The tetrahedral mesh can be used with several different simulation methods, such as the finite element method (FEM), and the main contribution of this paper is a novel tetrahedral mesh generation method based on adaptive surface extrusion.