IMIS - Marine Research Groups | Compendium Coast and Sea

IMIS - Marine Research Groups

[ report an error in this record ]basket (0): add | show Print this page

Fast and robust mesh generation on the sphere - Application to coastal domains
Remacle, J.-F.; Lambrechts, J. (2016). Fast and robust mesh generation on the sphere - Application to coastal domains. Procedia Engineering 163: 20-32. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2016.11.011
In: Procedia Engineering. Curran: Red Hook. ISSN 1877-7058, more
Peer reviewed article  

Available in  Authors 

Keyword
    Marine/Coastal
Author keywords
    Delaunay triangulation on the sphere; Geophysical flows; Parallelmeshing

Authors  Top 
  • Remacle, J.-F., more
  • Lambrechts, J., more

Abstract
    This paper presents a fast and robust mesh generation procedure that is able to generate meshes of the earth system (ocean and continent) in matters of seconds. Our algorithm takes as input a standard shape-file i.e. geospatial vector data format for geographic information system (GIS) software. The input is initially coarsened in order to automatically remove unwanted channels that are under a desired resolution. A valid non-overlapping 1D mesh is then created on the sphere using the Euclidean coordinates system x, y, z. A modified Delaunay kernel is then proposed that enables to generate meshes on the sphere in a straightforward manner without parametrization. One of the main difficulty in dealing with geographical data is the over-sampled nature of coastline representations. We propose here an algorithm that automatically unrefines coastline data. Small features are automatically removed while always keeping a valid (non-overlapping) geometrical representation of the domain. A Delaunay refinement procedure is subsequently applied to the domain. The refinement scheme is also multi-threaded at a fine grain level, allowing to generate about a million points per second on 8 threads. Examples of meshes of the Baltic sea as well as of the global ocean are presented.

All data in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS) is subject to the VLIZ privacy policy Top | Authors