• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.77-86
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• 2010

This paper provides background theories and numerical results of automatic finite element (FE) mesh generation for freeform discrete structures. The present method adopts the computer aided geometric design (CAGD) technique to overcome the limitation of case-sensitive traditional automatic FE mesh generator. The present technique involves two steps. The first one is to represent the shape of the structure using the geometric model based on the CAGD and the second one is to generate the discrete FE mesh of spatial structures over the geometric model. From numerical results, it is found to be that the present technique is very easy to produce the FE mesh for free-form spatial structures and it can also reuse some features of traditional automatic mesh generator in the process. Furthermore, it shows the possibility to be used for the shape optimization of large spatial structures.