PadMesh: a parallel and distributed framework for interactive mesh generation software

Meshes are the input for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, whose size and quality have important impact on the simulation results. With the continuous advancement of high-fidelity CFD simulation, the scale of needed computational meshes has become larger and larger, which poses great challenges to the development of interactive mesh generation software. To address this issue, a parallel and distributed framework called PadMesh is proposed, which performs as the infrastructure for developing various interactive mesh generation software (e.g., structured, unstructured and Cartesian). First, the framework PadMesh is demonstrated, including the introduction of design principles, software architecture and key components, namely message-oriented middleware, client application, server application and parallel supporting module. Second, a parallel and distributed structured mesh generation software called PGridStar is developed based on PadMesh. Strategies are investigated on managing the visual data and distributed data for structured meshes. Finally, two functionalities of the preliminary PGridStar are presented, which validate the usability of PadMesh in developing interactive mesh generation software.