Shrink Wrap Mesh Generation Using Morphological Operators with Selected Applications

Triangulated meshes discretized from commercial CAD applications often possess a considerable level of complexity. However, when conducting external aerodynamics simulations at an earlier design stage, these meshes are way too complex and contain complex features and topological holes. We propose a practical and fast algorithm to shrink wrap triangulated surfaces with the sole intent of topology and surface simplification. Building upon the concepts of mathematical morphology and newer advancements in geometry processing, such as generalized winding numbers, we show that it is possible to build a straightforward and robust algorithm that can guarantee genus-zero surfaces. Our approach uses a Cartesian background mesh (fixed and adaptive) to approximate an input triangulated surface’s interior and exterior volume. We use an octree data structure for adaptive mesh refinement. Although we demonstrate our algorithm exclusively on triangulated meshes, they are equally applicable to general polyhedral meshes. They are also well suited for handling point clouds (oriented and unoriented), and we show some examples of the same with some unoriented point clouds. We built our algorithms with a wide variety of applications in mind. However, we showcase the applicability of our algorithms for aerodynamic simulations, fluid volume extraction, and surface simplification. We also emphasize the practicality and ease of implementation of the proposed algorithms. We also compare our algorithms with existing literature.