A Neural Network-Based Mesh Quality Indicator for Three-Dimensional Cylinder Modelling

Abstract

Evaluating mesh quality prior to performing the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is an essential step to ensure the acceptable accuracy of cylinder modelling. However, traditional mesh quality indicators are often insufficient since they only check geometric information on individual distorted elements. To yield more accurate results, the current evaluation process usually requires careful manual re-evaluation for quality properties such as mesh distribution and local refinement, which heavily increase the meshing overhead. In this paper, we introduce an efficient quality indicator for varisized cylinder meshes, consisting of a mesh pre-processing method and a neural network-based indicator, Mesh-Net. We also publish a cylinder mesh benchmark dataset. The proposed indicator is trained to study the role of CFD meshes on the accuracy of numerical simulations. It considers both the effect of element geometry (e.g., orthogonality) and quality properties (e.g., smoothness and distribution). Thereafter, the well-trained indicator is used as a black-box to predict the overall quality of the input mesh automatically. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed indicator is accurate and can be applied in the mesh quality evaluation process without manual interactions.