SIAM J. NUMER ANAL.

(C) 1985 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Vol. 22, No. 6, December 1985 005

ICOSAHEDRAL DISCRETIZATION OF THE TWO-SPHERE*

JOHN R. BAUMGARDNER" AND PAUL O. FREDERICKSON
Abstract. We present an almost uniform triangulation of the two-sphere, derived from the icosahedron,
and describe a procedure for discretization of a partial differential equation using this triangular grid. The
accuracy of our procedure is described by a strong theoretical estimate, and verified by large-scale numerical
experiments. We also describe a data structure for this spherical discretization that allows fast computation
on either a vector computer or an asynchronous parallel computer.

1. Introduction. The first step in obtaining a numerical solution of a partial

differential equation is to choose the finite dimensional approximation space within
which the solution is to be represented. Most often a finite grid of some sort is used
in the description of this space. (Notable exceptions, in the case of partial differential
equations on a sphere, are spaces described by finite collections of spherical harmonics.)
Economy of computational effort and storage suggest that the grid be as nearly uniform
as possible because accuracy is limited by the largest elements in the grid while
computational effort and storage depend on the number of elements. Sudden changes
in the grid spacing also cause accuracy problems, such as the reflection and refraction
of waves that numerical meteorologists observed long ago. This leads one to the
consideration of nearly uniform triangulations of the sphere. Vestine et al. [1] used
triangulations of the sphere in their analysis of geomagnetic data. Sadourny, Arakawa,
and Mintz [2] and Williamson [3] used spherical triangulations in studies of global
atmospheric dynamics. Cullen [4] carried this work forward to the primitive equations
for the atmosphere.
The discretizations we describe here begin with an icosahedral triangulation of
the sphere, as do the triangulations in the works cited above. Our fundamental
innovation is a generalization to spherical triangles of the piecewise linear finite
elements introduced by Courant [5]. We use these to discretize second-order differential
equations on the sphere, exactly as the standard finite elements (see Strang and Fix
[6]) are used in the plane. We go on to solve these differential equations using the
multigrid algorithm FAPIN, demonstrating both the accuracy of the spherical finite
elements and the computational feasibility of the discretization scheme.
Our research collaboration has centered on two applications in geophysics: thermal
convection of the earth’s mantle [7], and the earth’s free oscillations. In both cases
the computations are based on finite element discretizations of the mantle, treated as
a thick spherical shell, in which concentric layers of nodes carry the dyadic icosahedral
triangulation described in this paper. Because two-dimensional finite element approxi-
mations are useful in their own right, as well as being easier to analyze in any detail,
we restrict this paper to their consideration.
2. The icosahedral grid. We begin by reviewing a simple procedure for constructing
an almost uniform triangulation of the sphere. The initial step is to project onto the
sphere the twelve vertices of the regular icosahedron. These twelve points define a
mesh consisting of twenty equal spherical triangles (Fig. la) bounded by thirty geodesic
arcs.
* Received by the editors January 5, 1984.
t Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90024.
Computer Research and Applications Group, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New
Mexico 87545.
1107
1108 JOHN R. BAUMGARDNER AND PAUL O. FREDERICKSON

N N 2

N 8
N 4

N 32
N= 16
FIG. 1. Dyadic icosahedral triangulations of the two.sphere.
 ICOSAHEDRAL DISCRETIZATION OF THE TWO-SPHERE 1109

Any triangulation T of the two-sphere can be refined by the very simple procedure
of connecting the midpoints of the three sides with geodesic arcs, yielding four smaller
triangles. We refer to the resulting triangulation T’ as the dyadic refinement of the
spherical triangulation T. This procedure may be applied to the initial icosahedral

.
mesh and repeated to generate a mesh of any desired resolution. Figure l b-f shows
five successive refinements of the original icosahedral grid. We note that there are
2 + 10n 2 nodes and 20n 2 elementary triangles, or cells, in the kth refinement, where
n=2
One measure of the resolution of a triangulation T is the maximum arclength
h h (T) of any edge in the triangulation. For convenience in obtaining error estimates,
however, we use a slightly more sensitive measure
(2.1) /=/(T) lim 2kh(T k)
k
where T denotes the kth dyadic refinement of T.
TABLE
Dyadic icosahedral spherical triangulations.

k n Nodes Cells h h

0 12 20 1.10715 1.32317
2 42 80 0.62832 0.66158
2 4 162 320 0.32637 0.33079
3 8 642 1,280 0.16483 0.16540
4 16 2,562 5,120 0.08263 0.08270
5 32 10,242 20,480 0.04134 0.04135
6 64 40,062 81,920 0.02067 0.02067

Table 1 provides a summary of the properties of the initial members of the set of
dyadic icosahedral spherical triangulations. In 6 we describe a special coordinate
system for the sphere based on the concept of the dyadic icosahedral triangulation.
This coordinate system leads to a computationally convenient data structure for
problems with spherical geometry, as the computational experiments of 7 demonstrate.
3. Spherical barycentric coordinates. We measure the position of a point x within
a spherical triangle in terms of its spherical barycentric coordinates r/= (r/, ’02, T3),
and use these barycentric coordinates in defining the finite elements on which the rest
of our theory is based.
DEFINITION 1. We call the vector function r/= (r/, r/2, *73) a barycentric coordinate
system for the triangle T if it satisfies the four axioms:
(i) *7 is an affine function of arc length on each of the three edges of the triangle,
(ii) takes on the value (1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), and (0, 0, 1) respectively on the vertices
1, 2, and 3 of the triangle,
(iii) is continuous on the triangle, and
(iv) is related to the barycentric coordinate systems T 1, T 2, 9" 3, and ,7 4 on the
four subtriangles Tt, T2, T3, and T4 of the dyadic subdivision of T by the equation
(+n, /2, n) on 7"
2 2
,7, 1/2+, 1/2n) on T.
(3.1) r/= (r/t, n2, ,73)
/ nl,4 1/2n, "-I"’T]3)
!
1--1 3\
on T3,
t,t- ,7 , 1/2- 1/2,7, 1/2- 1/273
//1
on T4.
1110 JOHN R. BAUMGARDNER AND PAUL O. FREDERICKSON

FIG. 2. Dyadic subdivision of spherical triangle, indexed as in (3.1).

All four axioms are satisfied by barycentric coordinates on a plane triangle. Condition
(i) is weaker than the usual requirement in the plane that r/be affine within the triangle
as well as on the edges. This is why we need to supplement it with axiom (iii), and
the recursive axiom (iv). Observe that (i) and (ii) together imply that r/takes on the
values (0, 1/2, 1/2), (1/2, 0, 1/2), and (1/2, 1/2, 0) at the midpoints of the three sides, and observe
that (iv) together with (i) implies that r/is affine on the three geodesic arcs connecting
these vertices. Moreover, (iv) allows us to connect the midpoints of the four smaller
triangles in the same way. As we iterate, we find that r/is defined on a dense network
within the triangle T, and the continuity assumed in (iii) defines everywhere within
T. This is an outline of the proof of the existence and uniqueness of spherical barycentric
coordinates
THEOREM 1. Axioms (i) through (iv) define a unique vectorfunction on any spherical
triangle with ordered vertices. At any point x within the triangle rll(x) + rl2(x) + TI3(x) 1.
4. Second-order finite elements on the sphere. The spherical finite elements under
discussion are a direct generalization of the triangular, piecewise linear elements
introduced by Courant [5] in 1942 and in widespread use today. We find it convenient
to define them in terms of the spherical barycentric coordinates just described.
DEFINITION 2. For any triangulation T of the sphere, define the finite-element
space S to be the space of all continuous real functions s on the sphere with the
property that for each triangle T in T there is a triple a- (a, a2, a3) of real numbers
such that
(4.1) s(x) a r/(x)= all-/l(X) d- a21"/E(X) d- a3/3(x
for all points x on this triangle T.
For theoretical purposes as well as computational convenience it is useful to
represent the spherical finite element space S in terms of a local basis. In fact, the
existence of this local basis is essential to the success of the finite element method.
DEFINITION 3. For any node of the triangulation T denote by L that element
of the spherical finite element space S that takes the value 1 at node and vanishes
at all other nodes.
These functions L form a basis for S in the sense that for any s S there is an
array of coefficients {si} indexed by the nodes of T, such that
(4.2) s(x)=siL,(x)
for all x on the sphere.
THEOREM 2. If the triangulation T’ is a dyadic refinement of the spherical triangula-
tion T, then the corresponding spherical finite element spaces satisfy
(4.3) Sc S’,
 ICOSAHEDRAL DISCRETIZATION OF THE TWO-SPHERE 1111

and their basis functions satisfy

(4.4) Li(x) L(x) +1 , L(x)
where N’i denotes the set of nodes in T’ neighboring node i.
Proof. It follows from axiom (iv) in Definition 1 that any s S can be expressed
exactly as a linear combination of barycentric coordinates over the dyadic refinement
T’ of T and is thus equal to an element s’ of the larger space S’. This computation is
followed most easily if the element s is taken to be a basis function Li, in which case
equation (44) follows. The general case follows from the fact that the basis functions
Li span the space S.
The accuracy with which a smooth function can be approximated by an element
of the space S of spherical finite elements determines rather directly the accuracy with
which a partial differential equation can be solved by the finite element method. Thus
the theorem that follows describes an essential property of the spherical finite elements.
In what follows,
while lul denotes the seminorm defined as the supremum over z and of IdEu/dt2[.
THEOREM 3. The space S approximates smooth functions uniformly to second order.
To be precise, for any triangulation T and any u C 2 there is s S such that

where h is the mesh constant of the triangulation.

Proof. Denote by s the interpolant of u, which is to say the element of $ that
agrees with u at all nodes of the triangulation. At the midpoint of any side of the
triangulation

(4.6) Is-ul<__lul.
The proof of this inequality is easily adapted from the proof of Theorem 1.2 in Strang
and Fix [6]. At the midpoints of the edges of the dyadic refinement T’ of T we have

(4.7) Is u] _-<
+-- lul.
Repeating the argument, we find that on the kth refinement the inequality

(4.8)
4

The bound (4.5) follows on taking the limit, since both s and u are continuous.
COROLLARY. The space Sn of spherical elements over the dyadic icosahedral triangu-
lation with 20n 2 elements has a member s that satisfies
(4.9) IIs- u[I < 0.221 n--Iul.
Proof We simply compute that/-<_ 1.3232n -2 for the dyadic icosahedral triangula-
tions of a sphere.
5. Discretization of a differential equation. Suppose that one desires to solve on
the two-sphere a differential equation of the form
(5.1) Du f
1112 JOHN R. BAUMGARDNER AND PAUL O. FREDERICKSON

where D is a second-order differential operator. For most purposes it is sufficient to

solve (5.1) in integral form, that is, to solve the system
(5.2) (v,, Du) (v,, f)
where {v,} is a set of test functions that spans a subspace of interest. The notation
(a, b) here denotes integration of the inner product a b over the two-sphere.
The fields u and f can be represented in discrete fashion as linear combinations
of the continuous basis functions Lj as
(5.3) u ujL.,
J
(5.4) f .fL,
J
and (5.2) may be expressed in terms ofthe basis functions, using the Einstein summation
convention, as
(5.5) (L,,
The matrices (L,, DLj) and (L,, L) are sometimes referred to as the stiffness and mass
matrices, respectively.
We shall now describe how these matrices may be computed. In the preceding
section it was shown that the basis function L associated with mesh point assumes
the value of the appropriate barycentric coordinate in each of the five or six surrounding
triangles. That is,
(5.6) L,
where r represents the set of triangles having a point as a vertex. It is therefore
sufficient to compute the quantities (r/l, Dr/) and (r/l, r/) on each of the triangles and
then use these quantities to assemble the matrices (L, DL) and (L, L). This, indeed,
is the standard procedure today in most large finite element computations. To achieve
a high level of accuracy it is convenient to compute (r/u Dr/) and (r/, r/) on a mesh
much finer than that used for (5.5). Simple recursion formulas based on (3.1) can
readily be derived for interpolating the discrete operators to a coarser mesh.
Let us by way of illustration consider the case where D is the Laplacian operator
V 2. Integrating by parts, one obtains
(5.7)
Referring to (3.1), we find that (Vr/t, V r/m) for a triangle on a given mesh can be
expressed in terms of the four subtriangles on the next finer mesh as

(5.8)
k=l

In a similar fashion one obtains for (, r/,,) the relation

(5.9)

where A k represents the area of subtriangle k and 6,,, is the Kronecker delta.
6. Icosahedral coordinates. For purposes of efficient computation it is advan-
tageous to simplify the barycentric coordinates by eliminating one of the three coordin-
ates, using the identity in Theorem 1. A further simplification results from using a
 ICOSAHEDRAL DISCRETIZATION OF THE TWO-SPHERE 1113

single pair (’01, ’02) of barycentric coordinates to describe two adjacent triangles at the
same time, as an image of the unit square.
We observe that the twenty spherical triangles of an icosahedral triangulation of
a sphere may be joined in pairs to form ten quadrilaterals which cover the sphere.
Thus we obtain a coordinate system for the two-sphere having the structure of ten
logical squares. For the discrete problem, quantities defined on the nodes may be
indexed using a row index, a column index, and a quadrilateral index as indicated in
Fig. 3. This natural dissection of the data structure into ten equal pieces allows for
straightforward implementation on computers with parallel architecture. Combining
row and column indices into a single index yields long vectors that can be processed
quite efficiently on vector computers or array processors. Symmetries of the regular
icosahedral grid may also be readily exploited. For example, the matrix operators of
(5.7) and (5.9) need be computed and stored on only one of the ten quadrilaterals.

(a)

(b)
FIG. 3. (a) Indexing of the ten quadrilaterals. (b) Row and column indexing of a single quadrilateral from
the icosahedral grid.

7. Computational experiments. To illustrate the practicality of the icosahedral

discretization scheme for spherical problems we present results for the differential
equation
(7.1) V2u S
where S is a vector (toroidal) spherical harmonic of Legendre degree I. Because the
spherical harmonics are eigenfunctions of the Laplacian operator on the two-sphere,
with eigenvalue 1(1 + 1), that is, since
(7.2) V2S,=I(I+I)S,,
we have a convenient analytic check for our numerical solutions.
In our numerical experiments we solved (7.1) for u in discrete form using the fast
elliptic equation solver FAPIN [8], [9]. This is a multigrid algorithm and makes use
1114 JOHN R. BAUMGARDNER AND PAUL O. FREDERICKSON

of the nested character of the dyadic triangulations. Thus the computational speed
depends on the fast interpolation and projection between grid levels, and the rate of
convergence depends on Theorem 2, which states that interpolation is exact.
Results for three harmonic degrees and four mesh refinements are summarized in
Table 2. In all cases the discrete operator has been generated on the n 128 mesh and
projected to the level at which it was used. Similarly, the spherical harmonic was
generated at n 256 and a quadrature procedure used to evaluate the inner product
(Li, St) needed in the discrete solution of (7.1). The intent was to make these two
sources of error small relative to the intrinsic error of Theorem 3.

TABLE 2

/=2 /=4 1=8

s,s)lU,) IIU-ull CPU seconds

8 6.03747 0.01096 20.5137 0.03693 79.1669 0.12285 0.1765

16 6.00927 0.00278 20.1268 0.00988 73.7144 0.03408 0.3548
32 6.00223 0.00075 20.0313 0.00264 72.4231 0.00892 0.9550
64 6.00047 0.00020 20.0075 0.00070 72.1045 0.00227 3.2191

Two measures of the error are given in the table. The first is a quotient of inner
products that would equal the eigenvalue of the toroidal spherical harmonic had the
computation been done exactly. These inner products are not done exactly but were
evaluated at two mesh levels above the level at which the solution was obtained. This
amounts to using a quadrature formula with 15 points per triangle to evaluate the
inner product. The second measure of error was simply U-ull, the uniform error
between the exact solution u and the computed solution U. We note that both measures
of the error display very clearly the second order behavior predicted by the theory.
The observed error is slightly greater than the bound of Theorem 3 because other
errors contribute as well.
The calculations were performed on a Cray-lS computer at Los Alamos, and the
observation that the computational cost grows more slowly than the number 10n2+ 2
of mesh points is due primarily to the more efficient vectorization available at larger
n. The times shown in the table are for 10 iterations of FAPIN, which reduced the
residual by a factor between 10 -8 and 10 -9 in every case--more than sufficient for the
precision shown. In all cases the initial guess for the solution U was the null field.

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[1] E. H. VESTINE, W. L. SIBLEY, J. W. KERN AND J. L. CARLSTEDT, Integral and spherical harmonic
analysis of the geomagnetic fieldfor 1955.0, part 2, J. Geomagnetism and Geoelectricity, 15 (1963),
pp. 73-89.
[2] SADOURNY, ARAKAWA AND MINTZ, Integration of the non-divergent baratropic vorticity equations
with an icosahedral-hexagonal grid for the sphere, Monthly Weather Review, 96 (1968), pp. 351-356.
[3] DAVID WILLIAMSON, Integration of the baratropic vorticity equations on a spherical geodesic grid, Tellus,
20 (1968), pp. 642-653.
[4] CULLEN, Integration of the primitive equations on a sphere using the finite element method, Quart. J.
Royal Meteorological Society, 100 (1974), pp. 555-562.
[5] RICHARD COURANT, Variational methods for the solution of problems of equilibrium and vibrations,
Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 49 (1943), pp. 1-23.
 ICOSAHEDRAL DISCRETIZATION OF THE TWO-SPHERE 1115

[6] GILBERT STRANG AND GEORGE J. FIX, An Analysis of the Finite Element Method, Prentice-Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1973.
[7] JOHN R. BAUMGARDNER, A three-dimensional finite-element model for mantle convection, Doctoral
thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, December 1983.
[8] PAUL O. FREDERICKSON, Fast approximate inversion of large sparse linear systems, Mathematics Report
7-75, Lakehead University.
[9] ., Fast approximate pseudo inversion of large sparse linear systems, to appear.
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