Topological Improvement for Quadrilateral Finite Element Meshes

Based on the local topological structures of finite element meshes, this paper presents several procedures for improving the topology of unstructured quadrilateral meshes. These procedures are established in the form of “case-operations”. A case is a kind of local meshed region, which satisfies some constrained conditions, and its topology can be improved by means of topological transformation. These procedures can be classified into two types: one for interior elements and the other for elements connected to the boundary. Several sample meshes are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.