Author(s)

Jiahong Zhang ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, 200093, China

Corresponding Author

Jiahong Zhang

ABSTRACT

Mid-surface extraction of thin-walled parts is a key technique for CAD dimensional reduction modeling and structural analysis. Particularly for variable-thickness structures, traditional offset-based methods struggle to generate stable and topologically correct mid-surface models. To address this issue, this paper proposes an automatic mid-surface extraction method for variable-thickness thin-walled parts based on an oriented signed distance field (SDF). First, the SDF of the model is constructed, and local minimum points are extracted to form a set of mid-surface candidate points. Subsequently, ray-casting–based face pairing relationships are employed to group matched face pairs. On this basis, geometric consistency filtering is performed using distance symmetry and normal opposition constraints to refine the mid-surface points. For constant-thickness and variable-thickness regions, offset generation and boundary-constrained surface fitting strategies are adopted, respectively, to complete mid-surface reconstruction. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves good stability and geometric accuracy across models with different thickness characteristics.

KEYWORDS

Mid-surface abstraction; oriented signed distance field; variable-thickness thin-walled models

CITE THIS PAPER

Jiahong Zhang. Midsurface Extraction of Variable-Thickness Thin-Walled Parts Using an Oriented Signed Distance Field. Advances in Computer, Signals and Systems (2026). Vol. 10, No. 1, 126-136. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/acss.2026.100116.

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