ABSTRACT
There is a growing demand for robust and efficient discretisation algorithms for general curved surfaces into finite elements of variable sizes and shapes. The boundary of a physical object is generally made up of patches of curved surfaces, which can be typically represented by NURBS surfaces generated in a commercial CAD environment. The surface discretisation itself is a surface model of the object for rapid visualisation, and it can also be used for the FE analysis, or it serves as an input for FE mesh generation within a volume. While many techniques developed in planar mesh generation are still applicable to surface meshing, there are difficulties and different geometric characteristics over curved surfaces that require modification, extension and special considerations.
