A note on a linear time algorithm for constructing adjacency graphs of 3D FEA data

In this paper, we present an algorithm for constructing adjacency graphs of 3D finite element analysis (FEA) data. Adjacency graphs are created to represent the connectivities of FEA data cells. They are used in most visualization methods for FEA data. We stress that in many engineering applications FEA data sets do not contain the adjacency information. This is opposite to computer-aided geometric design where, e.g., the winged edge geometrical representation is usually generated and utilized. By establishing intermediate data structures and using bin-sorting, we developed an efficient algorithm for constructing such graphs. The total time complexity of the aglorithm is linear in the number of data cells.