| Surface mesh generation is a critical component of the mesh generation process. The objective of the described effort was to determine if a combination of constrained Delaunay triangulation (for triangles), advancing front method (for quadrilaterals), curvature-based refinement, smoothing, and reconnection is a viable approach for discretizing a NURBS patch holding the boundary nodes fixed. The approach is significant when coupled with recently developed geometry specification that explicitly identifies common edges. This thesis describes the various techniques used to achieve the above objectives. Application of this approach to several representative geometries demonstrates that it is an effective alternative to traditional approaches. |
