Chapter 17
Breaking It Up: Triangles
Triangles are as old as geometry. They were of interest to the ancient Greeks, and in fact the roots of trigonometry can be found in their study. Triangles also became an indispensable tool in computer graphics and advanced disciplines such as finite element analysis. In graphics, objects are broken down into triangular facets for display purposes; in the finite element method (FEM), 2D shapes are broken down into triangles in order to facilitate complicated algorithms. Figure 17.1 illustrates a refinement procedure based on stress and strain calculations. For both applications, reducing the geometry to linear or piecewise planar makes computations more tractable.
Figure 17.1
2D finite element method: refinement ...
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