Modifiable Array Data Structures for Mesh Topology.

Topological data structures are useful in many areas, including the various mesh data structures used in finite element and finite volume applications. We present a mesh data structure which is both flexible enough to support general mesh adaptivity and is compactly stored in a few large arrays. This structure can efficiently store full topological information for meshes with mixed element types. It allows both constant-time adjacency queries and constant-time addition and removal of mesh entities. We compare this structure to similar structures for finite elements and graphics and present its performance for adjacency queries. We also present its use in adaptive simulation applications.