A SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE MESH QUALITY METRIC FOR

HEXAHEDRAL AND WEDGE ELEMENTS

Wa Kwok1, Zhijian Chen 2
1

Ansys, Inc. Southpointe, 275 Technology Drive, Canonsburg, PA 15317. Wa.Kwok@ansys.com

Ansys, Inc. Southpointe, 275 Technology Drive, Canonsburg, PA 15317. James.chen@ansys.com

ABSTRACT
This paper presents a mesh quality metric for hexahedral and wedge elements. A series of studies was carried out to relate the
proposed metric with the solution errors. During the studies, the metric was also compared with the aspect ratio, the warping
factor and the control number. The results show that the metric can be used to identify invalid as well as potential poor quality
elements, which may cause larger solution errors.
Keywords: mesh quality, mesh metric, hexahedral, wedge, mixed elements

1. INTRODUCTION
Recently, there have been great amounts of progress in
hexahedral mesh generation research. Several approaches [14] for various types of geometric domains were successfully
developed. However, these methods still cannot be directly
applied to general complicated models or assembly parts,
which have more than one body or volume. To overcome this
difficulty, both tetrahedral and hexahedral mesh generation
techniques are used together. First, the bodies or regions,
whose topologies are hexahedral meshable or which may be
critical to the analysis, are filled with hexahedral elements [57]. The rest of the domains are meshed with tetrahedral
elements. In order to make sure conformability between
these two different element shapes, authors [8] proposed to
use pyramids as transition elements to connect different types
of elements. The final mesh contains not only tetrahedral and
hexahedral elements but also pyramids and wedges. Figure 1
shows an assembly part, which has two solid cylinders on top
each other contained inside a larger hollow cylinder. The
inside cylinders are meshed with hexahedra, while the outside
is filled with tetrahedra due to the topology difficulty. The
pyramids are used as transition elements between tetrahedra
and hexahedra. Figure 2 shows a portion of interfaces
between these two different types of elements
Before this type of mixed element meshes can be used for
analysis, the first question which we may ask ourselves is:
Do the meshes contain any invalid or bad (poor quality)
elements, which may cause invalid or incorrect finite element
solutions? In order to answer this question, we need some
kind of metrics to measure the quality of different types of
elements. The metrics should be co-related each other. In
other words, they should have the same or similar physical

interpretation or meaning. Various mesh quality metrics for

tetrahedral elements have been extensively studied [9-14].
Field [15] also listed a very detailed survey about different
shape metrics for different types of elements. On the other
hand, there are very few studies in shape metrics for pyramid,
wedge and hexahedral elements[8, 15, 16]. This is the area,
which the study tries to address.
In the following sections, a mesh quality metric for
hexahedral as well as wedges elements is first presented. The
proposed metric is then evaluated by solving a simple
example. During this process, the relationship between the
metric and the solution error can be observed. This is
followed by discussing the future work.
.

Figure 1. Mixed meshes of an assembly part.

Q=
J min
R (1 Wmax ) J

max

J min 0
J min > 0

(1)

where R is an aspect ratio measure, which is used to

determine how flat an element is. In order to create a unified
metric for wedges and hexahedra, which can also be applied
or extend to pyramids later on, one way to compute the ratio
for a given element is based on the minimum and maximum
box of the element. The algorithm to calculate the ratio is
Figure 2. Pyramids as transition elements between
tetrahedra and hexahedra.

2. MESH QUALITY METRIC

The ultimate goal of this study is to develop a mesh
optimization method to improve the quality of threedimensional mixed element meshes. This requires that each
mesh quality metric should have the same or similar physical
meaning. With this requirement in mind, when designing
metrics for hexahedral and wedge elements, it should also be
able to apply each other and extend to other types of
elements, such as pyramids. One approach [8, 16] is to apply
tetrahedron shape metrics to other types of elements. In [8],
authors first derive four possible tetrahedra from a pyramid
and compute shape metric for each tetrahedron. The
minimum value is taken as the metric for the pyramid.
Ivanenko[16] used the similar approach for hexahedral
elements. For pyramids, there are two ways to create
tetrahedra. However, for wedges and hexahedra, there are
many ways to divide them and create tetrahedra. This process
can be very time-consuming. Another approach [15] is based
on the coefficients of the isoparametric transformation, which
is computational intensive and is not easily extended to other
element types.
The aspect ratio [12, 17] or the warping factor [17] could be
used. The fundamental problem of these measures is that
they cannot identify invalid elements, which cause finite
element solution invalid. Another limitation of the warping
factor is that when extended to the pyramid later, it is unable
to detect all degenerate and poor pyramids. For instance,
when the apex is moved very close to the quadrilateral face,
the pyramid is very flat and poor. However, if, in this case,
the quadrilateral face is co-planar, the warping factor is zero
[17], implying a perfect element.
It is well known that a necessary and sufficient condition for
a valid finite element solution to exist is that the Jacobian
determinant J be non-negative at every point in the
parametric space. However, there are no simple and cheap
ways to implement this kind of checking for the hexahedral
element [18-19]. For this reason, we propose the following
mesh quality metric for hexahedra, as well as wedges, which
is based on the Jacobian determinants J at some sample
points:

Find the longest edge of the element.

Create one bounding box for each of the two element

faces sharing the edge, if the faces are not in the same
plane.

Use one of the larger faces of one bounding box or the

corresponding element face as a base to create a
bounding box for the element. Repeat this process for
the other bounding box or element face.

Select the bounding box containing the element with the

shortest height.

Compute the ratio of the minimum and maximum

dimensions of the selected bounding box.

Aspect ratio for this element is equal to the abovecalculated ratio multiplied with a factor, which is used to
normalize the ratio between [0, 1]. The value of one
means a regular element. This factor depends on the
element shape.

The aspect ratio is problem and element type dependent. In

other words, for different types of problems, the requirement
of the aspect ratio for pyramid may be totally different from
that for wedges and hexahedra. It was found that when the
aspect ratio of a wedge or hexahedron was not too high, this
kind of elements did not introduce any significant errors in
the solutions for structural problems. Authors believe that
analysts should decide when the aspect ratio is too high for
given problems. Therefore, in the study of wedge and
hexahedral elements, R is always one. This implies the
aspect ratio is not considered, as long as it is within a reason
range, say larger than 0.1. In other words, the aspect ratio is a
step function in this case. When the ratio is larger than 0.1,
the final value is one.
Wmax in (1) is the maximum normalized warping factor. The
warping factor W is used to determine if all the four nodes of
a quadrilateral face of a hexahedron are on the same plane. It
has been intensively studied [17]. The factor calculation
seems to peak at about 7.0. Moving the node further off the
original plane does not further increase the warping factor.
Therefore, it can be normalized between 0 and 1. The factor
with a value of zero implies a perfect flat face. A value of the
factor larger than zero is a measure how twisted the element
is. For example, Figure 3 shows that a cube element with 8
nodes has the ratio Jmin/Jmax equal to one with using the
corner nodes as the sample points. After one of its edges 4-5
is moved along in x-direction with a distance of the edge
length, the element still has the same Jacobian ratio, but two

twisted faces. Figure 4 shows these two warped faces 1,3,4,2

and 5,6,8,7. In this case, the warping factor is 0.3689. This
kind of twisted elements is often found in meshes created
with hex-dominant mesh generation techniques [6, 7].
Jmin and Jmax in (1) are the minimum and maximum Jacobian
determinant values among all the sample points. When all the
determinants J are equal to each other, the ratio Jmin/Jmax has
a value of one. Therefore, this metric provides a maximum
value of one, implying a regular hexahedron or wedge, for
example, a cube or a wedge with equal length edges. So, the
range of the proposed metric is between [0, 1]

2.

Move an edge along and off the edge (Along Edge / Off
Edge).

3.

Move a face diagonal on and off the face (On Face / Off
Face)

4.

Rotate a face. (Rotation).

The minimum and maximum rotation angles are 90 degrees.

In Figure 6, the rotation angle is normalized between 1 and
1, based on the minimum and maximum angles. Similarly,
the maximum moving distance is the edge length and the
moving distance in the figure is also normalized into the
same range as the rotation angle.

Figure 3. Cube element with Jmin/Jmax = 1.

Figure 5. The metric values for various shape
changes of a hexahedron.

Figure 4. The element with Jmin/Jmax = 1 has two

twisted faces.
There are several ways to choose the sample points. Since
finite element solutions are obtained by integrating shape
functions at the integration (Gauss) points. In order to get a
valid solution, all the Jacobian determinants at these points
must be positive. Therefore, one obvious choice is to use the
Gauss points, if the type of shape function is specified in
advance. For instance, in Ansys, users need to specify the
element types for a given problem first, before starting to
mesh the model. Another approach is to use the corner nodes
of an element as the sample points.
Figure 5 displays the metrics variation with the shape
changes of a regular hexahedral element as illustrated in
Figure 6, i.e.
1.

Move a corner node in XYZ directions (Corner Node).

Figure 6. (a) Move a corner node, (b) one edge, (c)

one diagonal, and (d) rotate a face of a hexahedron.
Figure 7 shows a regular wedge element with equal length
edges, while Figure 8 illustrates that the corresponding metric
values vary with the shape changes of the element. In Figure,
the moving distance and rotation angles are normalized
between 1 and 1, using the edge length and 90 degrees
respectively.
Unlike the hexahedral case, moving one corner node in
different directions yields different metric values. In Figure 8,
the metric values due to repositioning node 3 (N3) in XYZ
directions are plotted. The figure also contains the metric
value changes caused by moving edge 12 (E12) in XYZ

directions. Note that the edge movements in XYZ directions

are equivalent to moving edge 12 along the edge, on face 123
and face 6521 respectively. In addition, the metric value
changes owing to the movement of a diagonal 26 (D26) of
the quadrilateral face 6521 in XY directions are displayed.
Like the hexahedral case, the diagonal movements in XY
directions are the same as to move it on and off the face
respectively. Finally, the metric value changes caused by
twisting the triangular face (123) and the quadrilateral face
6521 are demonstrated in the same figure.

relationship between the solution errors due to the shape

changes and the corresponding Q values.

Figure 7. A regular wedge element.

Figure 9. The test model.

3.1 The Simple Problem

Figure 9 illustrates the physical model to be tested, which is a
beam with a rectangular cross section under uniform
pressures along Y direction. The left end is completely
constrained. The exact solution of the problem is well known,
i.e. there are higher stress gradients along Y-direction and
constant along Z-direction. Although, the problem is very
simple, it can examine how the proposed metric responds
with different stress gradient distributions.

The beam was meshed with 20-node hexahedra, whose midnodes located at the middle of each element edge. The mesh
of the model is shown in Figure 10. The mesh was created in
such a way that the corresponding solution had less than
0.05% errors. The centerpiece of the model is the part (Figure
11), which was under study. The elements in this region were
uniform mesh.

Figure 8. The metric values for various shape

changes of a wedge.
In next section, the shape of an element selected from the
mesh of a simple problem is modified with the above
conditions and other additional conditions. The solution
errors due to the shape changes are observed.

3. METRIC EVALUTATION
Generally, a better quality mesh means a better finite element
solution, i.e. lower solution errors. A shape quality metric
should be able to inform users if there are any elements in a
given mesh, which may likely introduce higher errors in the
solution. For this reason, a simple problem is used to
evaluate the proposed mesh quality metric Q in terms of the
solution errors. The basic idea is to modify the shapes of
some selected elements in various ways and then observe the

Figure 10. The mesh of the entire model.

An interior element inside the center region was selected as
the key element for investigation. The nodal positions of the
element were changed in such a way that every node was
always inside the model. Therefore, there was no change in
the domain of the problem in every test case. The key
element was also isolated from load and boundary condition
affects.

exactly the same quality metrics for a given amount of

movement. However, the nodal stress errors in different
directions were quite dissimilar. When the node was moved
along Y direction away from its original position, the error
was larger than other directions. This was due to the higher
stress gradient distribution in Y-direction. The Z-direction
nodal movements resulted in few changes in nodal stress
errors. In the figures, only the maximum errors for a given
node movement were used for the plots.

Figure 11. The mesh of the centerpiece.

3.2 Tests and Results

The figure illustrates that when the metric Q approaches one,

there are lower solution errors. This implies that the better
element quality in terms of higher Q values reflects more
accurate solutions. It can also be seen that for an entity of
interest, such as the stress errors in X-directions, lower mesh
quality represented by smaller Q values result in higher
errors. Therefore, it always betters to improve elements if
their Q values are close to zero.

The following tests were conducted for various shape

modifications.
1.

Modify the shape of a selected (key) element with predefined manners outlined in the previous section, i.e.
(a) Move one corner node in X, Y, and Z directions.
(b) Move one edge in X, Y, and Z directions.
(c) Move two diagonal nodes in the three directions.
(d) Rotate one element face.

2.

Randomly, move all corner nodes of a selected element.

The exact solution of the problem is known. The solution

errors from the following tests were expressed in terms of the
percent errors of the exact solution. Since the original
solution error was so small, any larger errors in solutions can
be considered as the results of the shape changes. During the
tests, the proposed mesh quality metric Q was used to
evaluate the element quality by sampling corner nodes. As
pointed out early, the aspect ratio in the metric was not
considered.
During the tests, all the elements adjacent to the key element
were also evaluated. Usually, different elements have
different element qualities. Based on the assumption that the
poorest quality element might contribute the most to the
errors, the worst element quality among the adjacent affected
elements and the key element was taken as an element quality
indicator. For example, if the element 125 in a one test had
the lowest metric value, say 0.34, this test case had a metric
value of 0.34.

3.2.1 Test 1: Modify the shape of one

hexahedron with pre-defined manners
Figures 12 shows how the proposed quality metric Q varied
with the nodal stress errors, when one corner node of the key
element was moved in X, Y and Z directions. There were
four elements in the model affected due to this kind of
movements.
Since the original mesh of the region of interest was uniform,
the movements of the node in the three directions resulted in

Figure 12. Metric vs. stress errors for corner node

movement.
Figures 13 demonstrates the element quality, in terms of the
quality metric values, changed with the corresponding stress
errors, when the two nodes of an element edge were moved
together the same distance, i.e. moving one element edge.
Three element edges, parallel to X, Y and Z, respectively,
were moved one at a time. In this test, 12 adjacent elements
were affected due to the movement. Like the previous case,
for an entity of interest, such as stresses in Y-direction, lower
element quality (smaller Q values) yields higher solution
error. For the same Q value, different entities exhibit
different solution errors. As pointed out earlier, this was due
to different stress gradient distributions.

Figure 13. Metric vs. stress errors for edge

movement.

In the next case, the two nodes of a face diagonal were

moved together in XYZ directions at the same time. This
type of movements involved 12 adjacent elements. Like the
previous tests, the proposed metric was able to quantify the
element quality. This was reflected in terms of higher mesh
quality giving better solutions, as shown in Figures 14.

Figure 14. Metric vs. stress errors for dialog

movement.
In the last case, one element face was twisted by 10-degree
increments until the total angle was equal to 80 degrees. The
face normal was used as the axis of rotation. So, when the
face normal of an element was parallel to X-axis, the axis of
rotation was the X-axis, and so on. There were 18
neighboring elements involved in this kind of rotation.
In this test, three faces of the key element, with their face
normals parallel to X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis respectively,
were rotated. In all the three cases, for a given rotation
angle, all the metric values was the same, as shown in Figure
18. When a face were rotated to 80 degrees, the minimum
Jacobian determinant Jmin was negative. This denotes the
element was invalid and the corresponding result was
ignored. In these figures, only valid results were plotted.
Similar to the earlier tests, higher metric values yielded lower
solution errors and better elements. Therefore, the metric was
able to measure the element quality in terms of solution
errors.

Figure 15. Metric vs. stress errors for rotating face,

sampling at corners.

3.2.2 Test 2: Stochastic study with

hexahedral elements
In this study, the corner nodes of the key element were
randomly moved in any direction about 1000 times. This test
can simulate the mesh quality of real model meshes. The
purpose of this test was to determine if the proposed metric
still exhibits the same or similar behaviors as previous test
cases.
Figures 16 displays the solution results with the metric values
computed at the corner nodes. This time, there were no
distinct of stress errors in different directions. As pointed out,
for a given metric value, the stress error in the Y-direction
was higher than the Z-direction due to the stress gradient
distributions. As a result, some smaller metric values had
lower stress errors in the figures. However, when the metric
values approached one, the errors were consistently lower.
This implies larger metric values produce lower solution
errors. On the other hand, smaller metric values may or may
not result in larger solution errors. In any given problem, it is
unlikely to know stress gradient distributions in advance.
Therefore, it is always safer to improve elements with smaller
metric values in order to obtain better solutions. In other
words, the proposed quality metric can be used as a guideline
during the mesh improvement processes.

Figure 16. Metric vs. stress errors for random

corner node movement.

The same set of the data (stress errors) was also plotted
against the aspect ratio, the warping factor and the control
number (CN) [14], as shown in Figures 17~19. The aspect
ratio ranges from one to infinity [17]. In Figure 17, the range
was normalized between 0 and 1 for a better comparison.
The normalized range for the warping factor was also used to
plot the data. The control number ranges from 3 to infinity
[14], which is difficult to make a fair comparison with the
other metrics. For this reason, it was also normalized between
0 and 1, called the modified control number. It can be seen
that the aspect ratio and warping factor do not show as a clear
relationship as the proposed metric shown in Figure 16.
Figure 19 shows that the modified CN values relatively
uniformly scattered along most of the range. There is no a
clear correlation between the solution errors and the modified
control numbers. For instance, when the modified CN is 0.8,
some the errors are still higher and the errors at this value are
no significantly different from the values at 0.4. In other
words, when the modified CN approaches to 0.8 from 0.0, the
solution errors are not necessarily getting lower.
One important fact from this test is that both the aspect ratio
and the warping factor failed to recognize the invalid
elements. In this test, there were 96 cases, which had
negative Jacobian determinants at the corner nodes. These
negative determinants resulted in zero values of the proposed
metric and the modified control number. Further studies
show that three of these cases had negative Jacobian
determinants at the Gauss points, which generated invalid
finite element solutions. The solutions from these three cases
must be thrown away. Table 1 summaries the values of the
various shape metrics for negative Jacobians at Gauss points.
From Table 1 and Figures 17 and 18, it can be seen that for
invalid elements, the values of the aspect ratio as well as
warping factor did not show particularly different. In other
words, these two shape measures cannot identify invalid
elements.
One interesting fact is that when sampling at the corner
nodes, there were more negative Jacobians than at the Gauss
points, which resulted in the zero values of the metric. It
seems that using the corner nodes to sample is too
conservative or overkill. As pointed out before, the proposed
metric is designed as a guideline to identify poor elements,
which likely cause higher solution errors. It is believed that
this kind of the conservative approach is acceptable.

Figure 18. Warping factor vs. stress errors for

random corner node movement.

Figure 19. Modified control number vs. stress

errors for random corner node movement.

Table 1. Summary of various shape metric values

for invalid elements.
Quality
Metric, Q

Modified
Control
Number

Aspect
Ratio, R

Warping
Factor, Q

Stress Errors
(%)*

0.42604

0.106929

51.04

0.60890

0.078586

18.46

0.59004

0.074114

15.48

* Solutions are not reliable and should not be used.

3.2.3 Test 3: Stochastic study with wedge

elements
Like the previous study, the corner nodes of the key element
were randomly moved in any direction about 1000 times.
This time, the region of interest was filled only with wedge
elements as shown in Figure 20.

Figure 17. Aspect ratio vs. stress errors for random

corner node movement.

Figure 21 illustrates metric values for various nodal positions

with using corner nodes as the sample points. Like the
previous study, there were no distinct of stress errors in
different directions. Since for a given metric value, the stress

error in the Y-direction was higher than the Z-direction due

to the stress gradient distributions. Some smaller metric
values had lower stress errors as shown in the figures.
Similar to the hexahedral case, when the metric values
approached one, the errors were consistently lower. This
means better mesh quality in term of larger metric values
yield lower solution errors. Therefore, it betters to improve
elements with smaller metric values in order to obtain better
solutions.

sample points, is more conservative, compared with sampling

at the Gauss points. There were 30 cases, which had negative
Jacobian determinants at the corner nodes. Only one case
had negative Jacobian at the Gauss points, which resulted in a
24.7% solution error. In this case, the values of the aspect
ratio and the warp factor were 0.1968 and 0.067871
respectively. From Figures 22 and 23, it can be seen that
these values are not significantly different with other data.
This implies that both the shape metrics cannot identify
invalid elements.

Figure 20. The centerpiece with wedge elements

Figure 22. Aspect ratio vs. stress errors for random

corner node movement.

Figure 21. Metric vs. stress errors for random

corner node movement.

Figure 23. Warping factor vs. stress errors for

random corner node movement.

The same set of the data (stress errors) was also plotted
against the aspect ratio, the warping factor and the modified
control number, as shown in Figures 22 ~ 24. The
normalized ranges of these shape measures were used for a
better comparison. It can be seen that the aspect ratio and the
warping factor do not show as a clear correlation as the
proposed metric shown in Figure 21. Figure 24 illustrates
how the modified control number varies with the solution
errors. Unlike the hexahedral case, the control number shows
a similar trend as the proposed metric. From Figures 21 and
24, the latter one has a slightly clearer relationship with the
errors.
Like the hexahedral case, the aspect ratio and warping factor
failed to recognize the invalid elements, which produced
unusable solutions. Also, using the corner nodes, as the

Figure 24. Modified control number vs. stress

errors for random corner node movement.

Sweeping, Proceedings, 7th International Meshing

Roundtable, pp. 7-18 (1998)

4. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

In this paper, a mesh quality metric for hexahedral and wedge
elements is presented. The metric is based on the aspect ratio,
the warping factor and Jacobian determinants. A series of
studies to relate the metric with the solution errors was
carried out. The results show that the metric can be used to
identify poor quality elements, which may cause larger
solution errors. In addition, the studies also compared the
proposed metric with the aspect ratio, the warping factor and
the control number. The results show that both the aspect
ratio and the warping factor do not exhibit a clear relationship
with the solution errors like the proposed metric. More
important, they fail to recognize invalid elements, which
invalidate the solutions. Compared with the proposed metric,
the control number does not have a clear correlation with the
solution errors for hexahedra. In the case of wedges, it shows
a similar trend as the proposed metric.
In the future, similar studies will be carried out for pyramid
elements. The proposed metric will also serve as a guideline.
However, it is not straightforward to create all pyramids in a
given domain, like the studies for hexahedra and wedges.
One approach is to fill the domain with hexahedra first and
then divide each hexahedron into six pyramids. Once all
metric for three-dimensional elements are established, a mesh
smoothing and optimization for mixed elements will be
developed.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank all the members of the Ansys
meshing team and B. Joe for many helpful suggestions.

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