Generation of high quality 2D meshes for given bathymetry

Abstract

This thesis develops and applies a procedure to generate high quality 2D meshes for any given ocean region with complex coastlines. The different criteria used in determining mesh element sizes for a given domain are discussed, especially sizing criteria that depend on local properties of the bathymetry and relevant dynamical scales. Two different smoothing techniques, Laplacian conditioning and targeted averaging, were applied to the fields involved in calculating the sizing matrix. The L² norm was used to quantify which technique had the greatest preservation of the original field. In both the reduced gradient and gradient cases, targeted averaging had a lower L² norm. The sizing matrices were used as inputs for two mesh generators, Distmesh and GMSH, and their meshing results were presented over a set of ocean domains in the Gulf of Maine and Massachusetts Bay region. Further research into the capabilities of each mesh generator are needed to provide a detailed evaluation. Mesh quality issues near coastlines revealed the need for small scale feature size recognition algorithms that could be implemented and studied in the future.