Engineering with Computers

, Volume 28, Issue 3, pp 269–286 | Cite as

Performance characterization of nonlinear optimization methods for mesh quality improvement

Original Article

Abstract

We characterize the performance of gradient- and Hessian-based optimization methods for mesh quality improvement. In particular, we consider the steepest descent and Polack-Ribière conjugate gradient methods which are gradient based. In the Hessian-based category, we consider the quasi-Newton, trust region, and feasible Newton methods. These techniques are used to improve the quality of a mesh by repositioning the vertices, where the overall mesh quality is measured by the sum of the squares of individual elements according to the aspect ratio metric. The effects of the desired degree of accuracy in the improved mesh, problem size, initial mesh configuration, and heterogeneity in element volume on the performance of the optimization solvers are characterized on a series of tetrahedral meshes.

Keywords

Mesh quality improvement Optimization solvers Performance characterization 

Notes

Acknowledgments

The work of Shankar Prasad Sastry was funded in part by an Institute for CyberScience grant from The Pennsylvania State University. The work of Suzanne M. Shontz was funded in part by NSF grant CNS 0720749 and a Grace Woodward grant from The Pennsylvania State University.

References

  1. 1.
    Babuska I, Suri M (1994) The p and h-p versions of the finite element method, basic principles, and properties. SIAM Rev 35:579–632MathSciNetGoogle Scholar
  2. 2.
    Berzins M (1997) Solution-based mesh quality for triangular and tetrahedral meshes. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Meshing Roundtable, Sandia National Laboratories, pp 427–436Google Scholar
  3. 3.
    Berzins M (1998) Mesh quality—Geometry, error estimates, or both? In: Proceedings of the 7th International Meshing Roundtable, Sandia National Laboratories, pp 229–237Google Scholar
  4. 4.
    Babuska I, Aziz A (1976) On the angle condition in the finite element method. SIAM J Numer Anal 13:214–226MathSciNetMATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. 5.
    Fried E (1972) Condition of finite element matrices generated from nonuniform meshes. AIAA J 10:219–221MATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. 6.
    Shewchuk J (2002) What is a good linear element? Interpolation, conditioning, and quality measures. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Meshing Roundtable, Sandia National Laboratories, pp 115–126Google Scholar
  7. 7.
    Freitag L, Ollivier-Gooch C (2000) A cost/benefit analysis for simplicial mesh improvement techniques as measured by solution efficiency. Int J Comput Geom Appl 10:361–382MathSciNetMATHGoogle Scholar
  8. 8.
    Bank R, Sherman A, Weiser A (1983) Refinement algorithms and data structures for regular local mesh refinement. In: Stepleman R et al (eds) Scientific Computing. IMACS, Amsterdam, pp 3–17Google Scholar
  9. 9.
    Ollivier-Gooch C (1995) Multigrid acceleration of an upwind Euler solver on unstructured meshes. AIAA J 33:1822–1827MATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  10. 10.
    Rivara M (1984) Mesh refinement processes based on the generalized bisection of simplices. SIAM J Numer Anal 21:604–613MathSciNetMATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. 11.
    de L’isle E, George P (1995) Optimization of tetrahedral meshes. In: Babuska I, Henshaw W, Oliger J, Flaherty J, Hopcroft J, Tezduyar T (eds) Modeling, Mesh Generation and Adaptive Numerical Methods for PDEs, vol. 72. Springer, New York, pp 97–127Google Scholar
  12. 12.
    Edelsbrunner H, Shah N (1992) Incremental topological flipping works for regular triangulations. In: Proceedings of the 8th ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry, pp 43–52Google Scholar
  13. 13.
    Joe B (1989) Three-dimensional triangulations from local transformations. SIAM J Sci Stat Comp 10:718–741MathSciNetMATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. 14.
    Joe B (1995) Construction of three-dimensional improved-quality triangulations using local transformations. SIAM J Sci Comput 16:1292–1307MathSciNetMATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. 15.
    Amezua E, Hormaza M, Hernandez A, Ajuria M (1995) A method of the improvement of 3D solid finite element meshes. Adv Eng Softw 22:45–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. 16.
    Canann S, Stephenson M, Blacker T (1993) Optismoothing: an optimization-driven approach to mesh smoothing. Finite Elem Anal Des 13:185–190MathSciNetMATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. 17.
    Parthasarathy V, Kodiyalam S (1991) A constrained optimization approach to finite element mesh smoothing. Finite Elem Anal Des 9:309–320MATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. 18.
    Knupp P, Freitag L (2002) Tetrahedral mesh improvement via optimization of the element condition number. Int J Numer Meth Eng 53:1377–1391MathSciNetMATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. 19.
    Freitag L, Plassmann P (2000) Local optimization-based simplicial mesh untangling and improvement. Int J Numer Meth Eng 49:109–125MATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. 20.
    Amenta N, Bern M, Eppstein D (1997) Optimal point placement for mesh smoothing. In: Proceedings of the 8th ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, pp 528–537Google Scholar
  21. 21.
    Zavattieri P (1996) Optimization strategies in unstructured mesh generation. Int J Numer Meth Eng 39:2055–2071MATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. 22.
    Brewer M, Freitag Diachin L, Knupp P, Leurent T, Melander D (2003) The Mesquite Mesh Quality Improvement Toolkit. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Meshing Roundtable, Sandia National Laboratories, pp 239–250Google Scholar
  23. 23.
    Nocedal J, Wright S (2006) Numerical optimization, 2nd edn. Springer, New YorkGoogle Scholar
  24. 24.
    Munson T (2007) Mesh shape-quality optimization using the inverse mean-ratio metric. Math Program 110:561–590MathSciNetMATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. 25.
    Cavendish J, Field D, Frey W (1985) An approach to automatic three-dimensional finite element mesh generation. Int J Num Meth Eng 21:329–347MATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. 26.
    Knupp P (2009) Sandia National Laboratories. Personal communicationGoogle Scholar
  27. 27.
    Knupp P (2001) Algebraic mesh quality metrics. SIAM J Sci Comput 23:193–218MathSciNetMATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. 28.
    Armijo L (1966) Minimization of functions having Lipschitz-continuous first partial derivatives. Pac J Math 16:1–3MathSciNetMATHGoogle Scholar
  29. 29.
    Kelley CT (2003) Solving nonlinear equations with Newton’s method. SIAM, PhiladelphiaMATHCrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. 30.
    Sandia National Laboratories (2011) CUBIT Generation and Mesh Generation Toolkit, http://cubit.sandia.gov/
  31. 31.
    Si H, TetGen—a quality tetrahedral mesh generator and three-dimensional delaunay triangulator, http://tetgen.berlios.de/
  32. 32.
    Freitag L, Knupp P, Munson T, Shontz S (2004) A comparison of inexact Newton and coordinate descent mesh optimization techniques. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Meshing Roundtable, Sandia National Laboratories, pp 243–254Google Scholar
  33. 33.
    Diachin L, Knupp P, Munson T, Shontz S (2006) A comparison of two optimization methods for mesh quality improvement. Eng Comput 22:61–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. 34.
    Shontz SM, Knupp P (2008) The effect of vertex reordering on 2D local mesh optimization efficiency. In: Proceedings of the 17th International Meshing Roundtable, Sandia National Laboratories, pp 107–124Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.The Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity ParkUSA

Personalised recommendations