Abstract:

[Objective] This paper focuses on the discretization challenges of irregular body models within the context of the meshless numerical simulation method for material points. [Methods] A functional and user-friendly material point generation approach is designed and implemented through tetrahedral element partitioning of complex three-dimensional geometric models and an algorithm of automatic conversion of element to material point. [Results] The proposed method supports the parsing and meshing of external models in four formats and gives rise to an automatic material point generation system, which offers two interaction modalities, namely a command-line utility and a general browser, at the user level. Multiple discretization experiments on irregular bodies are conducted using this system, and the experimental results demonstrate that the generated material points can accurately reflect characteristics such as the mass distribution and spatial distribution of the model. [Limitations] Nevertheless, compared to regular bodies, the uniformity of the material points resulting from the discretization of irregular bodies still requires improvement. [Conclusions] Overall, this method serves as an efficient tool for generating material points of complex three-dimensional solid models.

Key words: material point method, irregular body, mesh generation, graphics visualization, particle discretization