Short Courses

The short courses will be held the day before the opening of the Conference. Courses offered will be taught by internationally known experts in the field of Mesh Generation. The courses will run an hour and a half in length and include course notes and coffee breaks. Instructors will be addressing practical issues in the design and implementation of both structured and unstructured mesh generation codes.

The courses are ideal for students just entering the field needing a foundation for research, or for seasoned professionals who would like to expand their current skill-set in the development of mesh and grid generation algorithms. to register for the short courses, mark the appropriate boxes on the registration form. The price is $100 per attendee which includes course material.

TOPIC: Basic Mesh Generation Algorithms
Steve Owen, Sandia National Laboratories
This talk is a brief introduction to some of the fundamental algorithms used in commercial mesh generation tools. It will cover triangle, tetrahedral, quadrileral, hexahedral as well as hex-dominant approaches. Delaunay, Advancing Front and Octree approaches will be discussed with respect to triangle and tetrahedral methods. Quad and hex methods will include mapping, submppaing, sweeping, paving, q-morph, plastering, h-morph as well as an ntroduction to selected research oriented methods. An introduction to 3D and parametric surface meshing methods will also be provided. A classification and comparison of existing mesh generation methods will be discussed, showing strengths and weaknesses for various applications. This course is intended to be an introductory course for those new to the field or who would like a non-technical refresher course on basic mesh generation algorithms.

Biography
Dr. Steve Owen is a researcher with Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, working with the CUBIT Mesh Generation Toolkit Team. His current work involves facet-based geometry representations for mesh generation. Past work has focused on unstructured quadrilateral and hexahedral algorithms, parametric surface meshing, boundary layer meshing for CFD, Delaunay methods, smoothing and topology cleanup, mesh sizing control, among others. He has extensive publication and editorial experience in the mesh generation community and maintains the Meshing Research Corner web site. Prior to Sandia, Steve worked in industry at Ansys Inc., a commercial finite element analysis company based in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, where he successfully developed and maintained mesh generation tools for commercial use. Steve received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999 while working for Ansys Inc. and received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from Brigham Young University in 1992. He is currently an adjuct professor at CMU, advising several graduate and undergraduate students.

TOPIC: Geometry & CAD for Mesh Generation
Tim Tautges, Sandia National Laboratories
Mesh generation is increasingly focused on working directly with CAD models, which introduces challenges completely independent of the mesh generation techniques being used. Several of the more common challenges include interfacing with CAD modeling engines, geometric detail removal, and so-called "virtual topology" techniques. Each of these topics will be described using real examples, and various solutions used in both the research and industrial communities will be discussed.

The shift to applying simulation during the design process and the increasing level of detail being simulated are resulting in the direct use of CAD models as the basis for meshing. Methods used to access these models range from direct access in the CAD system all the way to facet-based representions. The details of each of these approaches will be discussed, along with their relative advantages and disadvantages.

Geometric models originating in CAD systems usually have details at a finer resolution than desired for analysis. These details can reflect design intent, or can be artifacts of translation through formats such as IGES. Various techniques which have been proposed for removing details will be described in the context of real-world examples.

One technique which has become a staple for geometry-based mesh generation is so-called "virtual topology" modeling. Here, the geometric topology is modified while preserving the original geometric shape representation. This tool is being used in CUBIT to support detail removal, modeler-independent geometry decomposition, and several applications in meshing algorithms themselves. The virtual topology implementation used in CGM will be described in detail, along with various design decisons leading to that particular implementation.

Biography
Dr. Timothy J. Tautges performs research and development in hexahedral meshing algorithms, geometry techniques for meshing, and meshing and geometry component interfaces. He was the principle author of the Common Geometry Module (CGM), a library consolidating CUBIT's geometry capabilities in a form which can be integrated into other codes. Dr. Tautges has also performed research in automatic geometry decomposition and geometric detail removal. Dr. Tautges led the CUBIT project at Sandia National Laboratories from 1996-1998. He now works for Sandia as a telecommuter from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is also an Adjunct Professor in Engineering Physics. Dr. Tautges received his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering & Engineering Physics from UW-Madison in 1990.

TOPIC: Hexahedral Mesh Generation
Ted Blacker, Sandia National Laboratories
This short course will center on the technology and techniques associated with hexahedral meshing. The drivers for hex meshing will be discussed and the associated attributes of a "good" hex mesh will be described in detail. The meshing problem will be explored from a pragmatic perspective (how to use existing tools to accomplish the task) and a fundamental research perspective. Various algorithms with their relative strengths and weaknesses will be explored. The role of geometric editing (i.e. virtual geometry) in the hex meshing context will be described. Available products will be discussed and prospects for future research in this area will be evaluated. This course is designed to interest both the practitioners who must generate hexahedral meshes, the developers trying to integrate and strengthen CAE software and researchers working to expand the horizons of meshing automation.

Biography
Ted Blacker has been active in meshing and geometry research for most of his career. He graduated with a Masters from BYU in 1983, joined Sandia and there developed the paving algorithm, various meshing primitives, wrote the FASTQ code, worked on geometric decomposition, plaster and whisker weaving and various other technologies. He established and led the CUBIT project, founded the Meshing Roundtable and served as the conference chair multiple times. He received a Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University in 1993 and spent over 8 years in private industry leading the development of Fluent's GAMBIT product, a commercial preprocessing package, where the COOPER tool, virtual geometry overlays and numerous associated technologies were developed. He recently returned to Sandia National Laboratories where he serves as Department Manager for the Simulation Sciences Department, overseeing meshing and geometry development of CUBIT and leading an effort to integrate various tools for impact on the entire design through analysis process.

TOPIC: Unstructured Meshing
Paul-Louis George
The course will discuss the following aspects:

• Introduction and objectives
• Quality meshes (w.r.t. the targeted application)
  Planar, surface and volume cases
• Back to triangulation issues (Delaunay)
• Boundary integrity
• Field (bulk) points
• Mesh optimization methods
• Applications

Biography
P.L. George graduated from the Paris 6 University where he received his Phd in 1981 on "Parabolic problems." He then joined the INRIA and took a position in the Modulef project where the goal was to developp a library of computer procedures for Finite Element purposes. He turned on meshing technologies in the early 90's, where he founded the Gamma project. He is currently the head of this project devoted to meshing components with a special emphasis on 3D and surface mesh generation methods. He (co-)authored a number of papers, a couple of books and developped a series of mesh generation procedures, in three dimensions, which are widely used in the industry. These programs are, up to now, incorporated and integrated in most of the sofware vendor companies all over the world (US, Europe and Asia).