Unstructured Cut-Cell Generation for Complex Geological Modeling

In this paper, we propose an unstructured cut-cell generation method for complex geological modeling. The method can robustly and quickly generate cut results for surface and polyhedral meshes. First, we correctly identify intersecting elements in the input and compute intersection points and lines. Then, we integrate the intersection points and lines into the mesh face and subdivide it into a set of triangles. Finally, each mesh element is considered to be inside or outside each input object, and the result is finally extracted from the mesh elements generated in the above steps. To support topological queries and modifications in cutting process, we design a novel polyhedral mesh data structure, which introduces the concept of half-edge but represents it in an implicit manner. For each cell, we record its incident faces. For each face, we store the incident half-edges. For each vertex and edge, we store one of its incident faces. Our method is properly proved in a complex 3D geological model.