This grant provides funding for a GOALI project between the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ford Motor Company and ALCOA Technical Center to establish a graduate student traineeship site. The project is done in a distributed setting between three locations: (1) Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, MI; (2) ALCOA Technical Center, Pittsburgh, PA; and (3) University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. Internet-related technologies will be used for achieving synchronicity in research and adequate levels of collaboration. The graduate student traineeship site is focused on research and development of feature recognition and subsequent decomposition of such shapes into simpler shapes to support automatic finite element mesh generation. Creating meshes for simpler shapes and combining them is easier and results in better meshes than creating meshes for complex shapes. In the present research, these simpler shapes are called BLOBS (Basic Logical Bulk Shapes). BLOBS represent the basic elements into which an object must be decomposed. This project will result in a systematic methodology for decomposing a shape feature into BLOBS and the creation of a BLOB tree which can be used to sequence the generation of the mesh for efficiently generated and high quality meshes go beyond finite element mesh generation. This project, if successful, will educate the students about the value and needs of industrial research in the field of shape decomposition for mesh generation. By this technological and methodological exchange, industry will learn the constraints of academic research as well as the opportunity to influence university research. Finally, due to the university-industry collaboration, this project will create a conduit for technology transfer of university research into a company environment.
