HexGen and Hex2Spline: Polycube-based Hexahedral Mesh Generation and Spline Modeling for Isogeometric Analysis Applications in LS-DYNA

Abstract: In this paper, we present two software packages, HexGen and Hex2Spline, that seamlessly integrate geometry design with isogeometric analysis (IGA) in LS-DYNA. Given a boundary representation of a solid model, HexGen creates a hexahedral mesh by utilizing a semi-automatic polycube-based mesh generation method. Hex2Spline takes the output hexahedral mesh from HexGen as the input control mesh and constructs volumetric truncated hierarchical splines. Through B\'{e}zier extraction, Hex2Spline transfers spline information to LS-DYNA and performs IGA therein. We explain the underlying algorithms in each software package and use a rod model to explain how to run the software. We also apply our software to several other complex models to test its robustness. Our goal is to provide a robust volumetric modeling tool and thus expand the boundary of IGA to volume-based industrial applications.