Development of unstructured curved meshes with G1 surface continuity for high-order finite element simulations

Abstract

This paper presents a curved meshing technique for unstructured tetrahedral meshes where G1 surface continuity is maintained for the triangular element faces representing the curved domain surfaces. A bottom-up curving approach is used to support geometric models with multiple surface patches where either C0 or G1 geometry continuity between patches is desired. Specific parametrization approaches based on Bézier forms and blending functions are used to define the mapping for curved element faces and volumes between parametric and physical coordinate systems. A preliminary result demonstrates that using G1-continuity meshes can improve the solution results obtained.