International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering

Unit cell homogenization techniques together with the nite element method are very e ective for computing equivalent mechanical properties of composites and heterogeneous materials systems. For systems with very complicated material arrangements, traditional, manual mesh generation can be a considerable obstacle to usage of these techniques. This problem is addressed here by developing automated meshing techniques that start from a hierarchical quad-tree (in 2D) or oc-tree (in 3D) mesh of pixel or voxel elements. From the pixel=voxel mesh, algorithms are presented for successive element splitting and nodal shifting to arrive at nal meshes that accurately capture both material arrangements and constituent…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: 9713335, 9896284