Fast Distance Fields for Fluid Dynamics Mesh Generation on Graphics Hardware

TL;DR

This paper introduces a CUDA-accelerated method for rapidly generating narrow band signed distance fields from triangulated surfaces, significantly reducing pre-processing and mesh-generation times for fluid dynamics simulations on graphics hardware.

Contribution

It presents a novel GPU-based implementation of the Characteristic/Scan Conversion algorithm with improved robustness and efficient handling of complex geometric data.

Findings

Fast generation of signed distance fields for large triangulated surfaces

Reduced pre-processing and mesh-generation times on GPU

Robust handling of complex geometric data

Abstract

We present a CUDA accelerated implementation of the Characteristic/Scan Conversion algorithm to generate narrow band signed distance fields in logically Cartesian grids. We outline an approach of task and data management on GPUs based on an input of a closed triangulated surface with the aim of reducing pre-processing and mesh-generation times. The work demonstrates a fast signed distance field generation of triangulated surfaces with tens of thousands to several million features in high resolution domains. We present improvements to the robustness of the original algorithm and an overview of handling geometric data.