EBMesh: An embedded boundary meshing tool

Abstract

This paper describes a method for constructing Cartesian meshes for embedded boundary algorithms by using a ray-tracing technique. In this approach, each mesh cell is distinguished as being inside, outside, or on the boundary of the input geometry, which is determined by firing rays parallel to x/y/z coordinates. The most expensive process of the embedded boundary mesh generation, an edge-geometry intersection test, is performed for the group of edges on a fired ray line together, which decreases the computational complexity of the whole method significantly. Produced boundary cells also have edge-cut fraction information and volume cut fraction information for each material. This work is implemented to be enable to directly import various CAD-based solid model formats and as an open-source code to be used easily in many engineering simulation fields. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.