Converting an unstructured quadrilateral mesh to a standard T-spline surface

摘要

This paper presents a novel method for converting any unstructured quadrilateral mesh to a standard T-spline surface, which is C 2-continuous except for the local region around each extraordinary node. There are two stages in the algorithm: the topology stage and the geometry stage. In the topology stage, we take the input quadrilateral mesh as the initial T-mesh, design templates for each quadrilateral element type, and then standardize the T-mesh by inserting nodes. One of two sufficient conditions is derived to guarantee the generated T-mesh is gap-free around extraordinary nodes. To obtain a standard T-mesh, a second sufficient condition is provided to decide what T-mesh configuration yields a standard T-spline. These two sufficient conditions serve as a theoretical basis for our template development and T-mesh standardization. In the geometry stage, an efficient surface fitting technique is developed to improve the geometric accuracy. In addition, the surface continuity around extraordinary nodes can be improved by adjusting surrounding control nodes. The algorithm can also preserve sharp features in the input mesh, which are common in CAD (Computer Aided Design) models. Finally, a Bézier extraction technique is used to facilitate T-spline based isogeometric analysis. Several examples are tested to show the robustness of the algorithm.