The construction of optimized high-order surface meshes by energy-minimization

Despite the increasing popularity of high-order methods in computational fluid dynamics, their application to practical problems still remains challenging. In order to exploit the advantages of high-order methods with geometrically complex computational domains, coarse curved meshes are necessary, i. e. high-order representations of the geometry. This dissertation presents a strategy for the generation of curved high-order surface meshes. The mesh generation method combines least-squares fitting with energy functionals, which approximate physical bending and stretching energies, in an incremental energy-minimizing fitting strategy. Since the energy weighting is reduced in each increment, the resulting surface representation features high accuracy. Nevertheless, the beneficial influence of the energy-minimization is retained. The presented method aims at enabling the utilization of the superior convergence properties of high-order methods by facilitating the construction of coarser meshes, while ensuring accuracy by allowing an arbitrary choice of geometric approximation order. Results show surface meshes of remarkable quality, even for very coarse meshes representing complex domains, e. g. blood vessels.