Metric construction by length distribution tensor and edge based error for anisotropic adaptive meshing

Metric tensors play a key role to control the generation of unstructured anisotropic meshes. In practice, the most well established error analysis enables to calculate a metric tensor on an element basis. In this paper, we propose to build a metric field directly at the nodes of the mesh for a direct use in the meshing tools. First, the unit mesh metric is defined and well justified on a node basis, by using the statistical concept of length distribution tensors. Then, the interpolation error analysis is performed on the projected approximate scalar field along the edges. The error estimate is established on each edge whatever the dimension is. It enables to calculate a stretching factor providing a new edge length distribution, its associated tensor and the corresponding metric. The optimal stretching factor field is obtained by solving an optimization problem under the constraint of a fixed number of edges in the mesh. Several examples of interpolation error are proposed as well as preliminary results of anisotropic adaptation for interface and free surface problem using a level set method. 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.