Geometric Mesh Partitioning: Implementation and Experiments

We investigate a method of dividing an irregular mesh into equal-sized pieces with few interconnecting edges. The method's novel feature is that it exploits the geometric coordinates of the mesh vertices. It is based on theoretical work of Miller, Teng, Thurston, and Vavasis, who showed that certain classes of "well-shaped" finite-element meshes have good separators. The geometric method is quite simple to implement: we describe a Matlab code for it in some detail. The method is also quite efficient and effective: we compare it with some other methods, including spectral bisection.