The thin shell remeshing technique combines some of the advantages of the Thompson and Optimesh methods (elliptic rules) with some of the advantages of the algebraic spine technique (low cost and control of the motion of internal mesh nodes). This remeshing algorithm is designed to handle the large mesh deformations and nodal displacements that are encountered in blow molding and thermoforming applications. The thin shell rule is available in both 2D and 3D.

The thin shell remeshing method exploits the topological regularity that is usually found in blow molding applications (single- or multilayer), but it is by no means limited to the simulation of blow molding.

Note that the use of the thin shell remeshing technique does not introduce any particular thin shell assumptions into the governing equations. There is, in fact, no interaction between a particular remeshing rule and the equations to be solved, and even when the thin shell remeshing technique is used, the full flow equations (momentum, energy, incompressibility, and constitutive equations) are solved.