Transport Mapping

Transport mapping (also called transfinite interpolation) is the only mesh-generation algorithm for quadrilateral element meshes in FEFLOW. It can also be used to generate triangle meshes based on an intermediate mesh with quadrilateral elements.

Precondition for the application of transport mapping is that the Quadrilateral Mode option is switched on ( Mesh menu), which requires that all supermesh polygons consist of four edges.

	Meshes with quadrilateral elements contain very regular elements and can lead to faster computation and more stability.
	The geometrical flexibility is very limited, as all supermesh polygons have to have four edges only. Lines and points are not considered.

Transport mapping does not consider lines and points in the supermesh. Local refinement along edges is not supported.

Properties

Property	Description
Mesh Anisotropy	With an anisotropy factor of 1 (default), the x and y coordinates of the polygons, lines and points are handed over to the mesh generator as original values. Applying another factor, the y coordinates are scaled with this factor for the mesh generation. Thus, it is possible, to obtain a finer mesh vertically than horizontally or vice versa. It has to be kept in mind, however, that distorted elements may be generated by applying very small or very large factors.
Triangulation on Quadrilaterals	With this option turned on, a triangular mesh will be generated based on a subdivision of intermediate quad elements.
Sort Areally	With this option turned on, more than one supermesh polygons will be sorted by size for the mesh generation, i.e., generation will start with the smallest polygon and finalize with the largest. This helps to honour properties of small polygons in the common case that they are meant to be meshed with a fine mesh, large ones with a coarser mesh.