Delaunay mesh generation for an unstructured-grid ocean general circulation model

Legrand, Sébastien [UCL] Legat, Vincent [UCL] Deleersnijder, Eric [UCL]

An incremental method is presented to generate automatically boundary-fitted Delaunay triangulations of the global ocean. The method takes into account Earth curvature and allows local mesh refinement in order to resolve topological or dynamical features like midocean ridges or western boundary currents. Crucial issues like the nodes insertion process, the boundary integrity problem or the creation of inner nodes are explained. Finally, the quality of generated triangulations is discussed.