• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.110-116
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• 2006

Finite element method (FEM) provides several advantages over other numerical methods such as boundary element method, since it allows truly volumetric analysis and incorporation of realistic electrical conductivity values. Finite element mesh generation is the first requirement in such in FEM to represent the volumetric domain of interest with numerous finite elements accurately. However, conventional mesh generators and approaches offered by commercial packages do not generate meshes that are content-adaptive to the contents of given images. In this paper, we present software that has been implemented to generate content-adaptive finite element meshes (cMESHes) based on the contents of MR images. The software offers various computational tools for cMESH generation from multi-slice MR images. The software named as the Content-adaptive FE Mesh Generation Toolbox runs under the commercially available technical computation software called Matlab. The major routines in the toolbox include anisotropic filtering of MR images, feature map generation, content-adaptive node generation, Delaunay tessellation, and MRI segmentation for the head conductivity modeling. The presented tools should be useful to researchers who wish to generate efficient mesh models from a set of MR images. The toolbox is available upon request made to the Functional and Metabolic Imaging Center or Bio-imaging Laboratory at Kyung Hee University in Korea.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.2932-2943
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• 1994

An efficient approach to the automatic construction of effective quadrilateral finite element meshes for two-dimensional analysis is presented. The procedure is composed of, firstly, an initial mesh generation and, secondly, an h-version of adaptive refinement based on error analysis. As for an initial mesh generation scheme, a modified looping algorithm has been employed. For the adaptive refinement process, an error indicator obtained by computing the residual error of the equilibrium equations in the energy norm with a relaxation factor has been employed. Examples of mesh generation and self-adaptive mesh improvements are given. These example solutions demonstrate that an effective mesh for a given error tolerance can be obtained in a few steps of the analysis processes.

• International Journal of CAD/CAM
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.73-79
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• 2006

In this paper, we propose a new triangular finite element mesh generation method based on simplification of high-density mesh and adaptive Level-of-Detail (LOD) methods for efficient CAE. In our method, mesh simplification is used to control the mesh properties required for FE mesh, such as the number of triangular elements, element shape quality and size while keeping the specified approximation tolerance. Adaptive LOD methods based on vertex hierarchy according to curvature and region of interest, and global LOD method preserving density distributions are also proposed in order to construct a mesh more appropriate for CAE purpose. These methods enable efficient generation of FE meshes with properties appropriate for analysis purpose from a high-density mesh. Finally, the effectiveness of our approach is shown through evaluations of the FE meshes for practical use.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.403-409
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• 2003

The finite element method is one of the most widely used method of structural analysis that has wide applications in diverse fields of engineering and science. The method has been proven effective and reliable in many practical problems. One of the reasons for the methods' popularity is its ease of use, but still the user has to input the finite element mesh which affects the accuracy of the results. The knowledge required to form an effective mesh for a given problem is somewhat complex and for sometime there has been research effort to automate the generation of the mesh and this is called the adaptive mesh generation scheme. A good adaptive mesh scheme seemed to require an accurate assessment of error and generally this requires some additional computation. This paper looks into the possibility of generating adaptive meshes based on representative strain values in each finite element method. The proposed adaptive scheme does not require additional computations other that looking up the data values already computed as finite element analysis results and simple manipulations of these data. Two plane stress problems, a plate with a hole and a deep beam with a concentrated load at the end are considered to show the progress of the improved generation of adaptive meshes using the scheme.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.447-455
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• 1999

An adaptive mesh generation scheme is developed for effective non-linear analysis of the shell structures under large deformation. In particular, based on a posteriori error estimation, remeshing method on each load step is of primary interest here. An advancing front method, called paving method, is adopted for remeshing. It can be known that the adaptive mesh generation using contours of spacing values obtained from stress errors has an advantage in the adaptive analysis of the shell structures.

• Journal of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.90-97
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• 1996

The optimal mesh refinement has a meaning that error of the every element is within an allowable level and in uniformly distributed. The adaptive mesh generation may be required to achieve the optimal mesh generation. For the purpose of optimal mesh generation, an error estimation and an adaptive mesh refinement are required. Using the adaptive mesh generation the second finite element analysis is performed with the result of the first analysis. In the process the error estimation is required. In this study the adaptive mesh generation program for triangular element is developed, and for a posteriori error estimation the stress projection approach is considered. It has been found the multigrid technique, where the error estimation and the mesh generation are combined in multi-step of analysis, may be used efficiently in the finite element analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.46-53
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• 1999

In this paper, made was a study on a mesh generation method based on the pollution error. This method is designed for the control of the pollution error in any patch of elements of interest. It is a well-known fact that the pollution error estimates are much more than the local one. When the pollution error is significant, nothing can be said about the reliability of any estimator based on local computations in the patch. Reliable a posteriori error estimation is possible by controlling the pollution error in the patch through proper design of the mesh outside the patch. This design is possible by equally distributing the pollution error indicators over the mesh outside the patch. The mesh generated from the conventional feedback pollution-adaptive mesh generation algorithm needs many iterations. Therefore, the solution time is significant. But the remeshing scheme in the proposed method was used here. It was shown that the pollution-adaptive mesh improves the E.I., simply denoted as Effectivity Index, on the patch of interest, and the pollution error reduces less than the local error.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.135-149
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• 2003

The bubble packing method is implemented for adaptive mesh generation in two and three dimensions. Bubbles on the boundary of a three-dimensional domain are controlled independently of the interior bubbles in the domain, and a modified octree technique is employed to place initial bubbles in the three-dimensional zone. Numerical comparisons are made with other mesh generation techniques to demonstrate the effectiveness of the present bubble packing scheme for two- and three-dimensional domains. It is shown that this bubble packing method provides a high quality of mesh and affordable control of mesh density as well.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.8-16
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• 2007

Finite element analysis (FEA) is an effective means for the analysis of bioelectromagnetism. It has been successfully applied to various problems over conventional methods such as boundary element analysis and finite difference analysis. However, its utilization has been limited due to the overwhelming computational load despite of its analytical power. We have previously developed a novel mesh generation scheme that produces FE meshes that are content-adaptive to given MR images. MRI content-adaptive FE meshes (cMeshes) represent the electrically conducting domain more effectively with far less number of nodes and elements, thus lessen the computational load. In general, the cMesh generation is affected by the quality of feature maps derived from MRI. In this study, we have tested various feature maps created based on the improved differential geometry measures for more effective cMesh head models. As performance indices, correlation coefficient (CC), root mean squared error (RMSE), relative error (RE), and the quality of cMesh triangle elements are used. The results show that there is a significant variation according to the characteristics of specific feature maps on cMesh generation, and offer additional choices of feature maps to yield more effective and efficient generation of cMeshes. We believe that cMeshes with specific and improved feature map generation schemes should be useful in the FEA of bioelectromagnetic problems.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.659-665
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• 2010

The finite element method(FEM) is proven to be an effective approximate method of structural analysis if proper element types and meshes are chosen, and recently, the method is often applied to solve complex dynamic and nonlinear problems. A properly chosen element type and mesh yields reliable results for dynamic finite element structural analysis. However, dynamic behavior of a structure may include unpredictably large strains in some parts of the structure, and using the initial mesh throughout the duration of a dynamic analysis may include some elements to go through strains beyond the elements' reliable limits. Thus, the finite element mesh for a dynamic analysis must be dynamically adaptive, and considering the rapid process of analysis in real time, the dynamically adaptive finite element mesh generating schemes must be computationally efficient. In this paper, a computationally efficient dynamically adaptive finite element mesh generation scheme for dynamic analyses of structures is described. The concept of representative strain value is used for error estimates and the refinements of meshes use combinations of the h-method(node movement) and the r-method(element division). The shape coefficient for element mesh is used to correct overly distorted elements. The validity of the scheme is shown through a cantilever beam example under a concentrated load with varying values. The example shows reasonable accuracy and efficient computing time. Furthermore, the study shows the potential for the scheme's effective use in complex structural dynamic problems such as those under seismic or erratic wind loads.