SBIR-STTR Award

Illinois Rocstar LLC (IR) will develop a robust methodology and software for automated decomposition and hexahedral mesh generation to address the U.S. Navy modeling and simulation (M&S) needs. Extending the Sandia National Laboratory (SNL) CUBIT package and the IR Nuclear Energy Modeling System (NEMoSys) meshing software, the proposed automated hex-meshing software, offered as an extension module to CUBIT, uses artificial intelligence for decomposition and robust hex meshing algorithms. The product software will support meshing of solid objects, required types of input and output, cross-OS functionality, and compatibility with Naval M&S software. The geometric constraints of hexahedral elements require that a complex domain be first decomposed to a set of hex-meshable sub-domains, a critical task that can take a large portion of total M&S time. NEMoSys is the IR in-house, cross operating system, open-source meshing software. The package integrates a carefully selected set of open-source computational geometry and meshing libraries into a coherent tool that provides meshing services including automated mesh generation, quality evaluation, partitioning/joining, accurate and conservative grid data transfer, re-meshing, adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), physics solution verification, and format conversion. IR will investigate the potential for replacing user expertise with artificial intelligence in the critical task of domain decomposition. IR will establish technical feasibility through research, development, and prototyping of the smart decomposition and automated hex-meshing methodology. SNL will provide technical advice on CUBIT, modifications to the underlying algorithm, testing, and benchmarking. IR will perform preliminary testing and verification to demonstrate the feasibility of decomposition and hex meshing processes. In consultation with SNL, IR will develop plans for the full implementation and testing of the plugin in subsequent phases.

Benefit:
The commercial vision of Illinois Rocstar is to bring multiphysics capabilities to more industry and government users by making applicable software easier to use, more robust, and more capable. The in-house, open-source NEMoSys product brings together a wide variety of meshing capabilities and offers a simple and user-friendly interface. The effort proposed herein complements other IR commercialization efforts, which are constituted from two major components: i) making high-performance physics software easy-to-use for non-expert users, and ii) integrating available software and producing niche capabilities. The market for meshing software is highly multidisciplinary with major sectors in engineering, computer sciences, and applied mathematics. Most CAD and numerical analysis software require some sort of meshing capability, and hexahedral meshes are generally preferred. If successful, this product will act as a standalone tool that addresses many of these needs and stands ready for integration with other tools. The new IR product will be an extension plugin for the SNL CUBIT package providing robust, automated geometric decomposition and hex-meshing generation. CUBIT is a full-featured toolkit for robust generation of surface and volume finite element meshes and geometry preparation.

Keywords:
Finite Element Analysis, Finite Element Analysis, adaptive mesh refinement, mesh quality, Hexahedral meshes, AI, Mesh Generation

Illinois Rocstar LLC (IR), in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), will develop a robust methodology and software for automated domain decomposition and hexahedral mesh generation to address the U.S. Navy modeling and simulation (M&S) needs. The proposed automated hex meshing tool, named Auto-Hex, will be offered as an extension module to the Sandia National Laboratories CUBIT software. Auto-Hex uses advanced geometric reasoning and artificial intelligence for automated domain decomposition and robust hex(-dominant) meshing. Auto-Hex will support meshing of solid objects with user required types of input and output formats, cross-OS functionality, and compatibility with Navy M&S software. The problem of hexahedral meshing is mathematically global in scope. This geometrically constrained discretization problem is multi-objective and can be solved utilizing more than one decomposition path. Currently the most reliable way to hex mesh a complex geometry is to manually decompose it into hex-meshable partitions. This task requires significant meshing expertise, and it can take a very large portion of total M&S time. CUBIT is known for its multitude of tools for generating webcuts and domain decomposition tailored for hex-meshing. CUBIT will be enhanced with Auto-Hex functionality to form an IR in-house, cross-OS functional, automated hex(-dominant) mesh generation software. During Phase I IR and SNL teams successfully demonstrated the potential for replacing user expertise with artificial intelligence in the critical task of domain decomposition. The technologies developed during the Phase I effort included advanced geometric reasoning based on the skeletal mesh and development of machine learning models for semantic segmentation. The technical feasibility of the task was established through research, development, and prototyping of the smart decomposition and automated hex-meshing methodology. During Phase II, IR and SNL will fully develop the product. SNL will perform tasks related to skeletal-based geometric reasoning, Auto-Hex plugin GUI development, extension of the CUBIT, testing, and benchmarking. IR will perform the development, testing and verification of machine learning based decomposition, geometric loops and feature points extraction and hex meshing processes.

Benefit:
The commercial vision of Illinois Rocstar is to bring multiphysics capabilities to more industry and government users by making applicable software easier to use, more robust, and more capable. The in-house, open-source NEMoSys product brings together a wide variety of automated meshing services and offers a simple and user-friendly interface. The effort proposed herein complements other IR commercialization efforts, which are constituted from two major components: i) making high-performance physics software easy-to-use for non-expert users, and ii) integrating available software and producing niche capabilities. The market for advanced meshing software is highly multidisciplinary with major sectors in engineering, computer sciences, and applied mathematics. Most CAD and numerical analysis software require some sort of meshing capability, and hexahedral meshes are generally preferred due to their ability to lower solution error and solution convergence time. The Auto-Hex product will be an extension plugin for the SNL CUBIT package providing robust, automated geometric decomposition and hex-meshing generation. CUBIT is a full-featured toolkit for generation of surface and volume finite element meshes and geometry preparation. The Auto-Hex product will be an out-of-box extension module to SNLs CUBIT software. The proposed plugin module addresses automated domain decomposition and hex-meshing using state-of-art geometric reasoning and artificial intelligence.

Keywords:
Geometric Reasoning, domain decomposition, Hex-dominant meshing, skeletal mesh, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Hexahedral Meshing, Finite Element Analysis, Machine Learning