Novel distance-based masking and adaptive alpha-shape methods for CNN-ready reconstruction of arbitrary 2D CFD flow domains
Interpolating scattered CFD datasets onto a uniform Cartesian grid can distort the true geometry, producing a convex-hull type envelope and activating nonphysical regions. This work presents a reconstruction framework that recovers physically consistent masks before exporting CNN-ready fields. It introduces two novel strategies, distance-based masking and an adaptive alpha-shape formulation that normalizes alpha using local data resolution, and evaluates them against classical alpha-shape boundary recovery. A quantitative, topology-aware metric suite is introduced to assess retention, suppression of unsupported regions, overlap consistency, and connectivity. The novel distance-based method is robust across the geometries considered under the same threshold rule, with tau set to the minimum CFD grid spacing, and achieves 500-800 times speedups over classical alpha-shapes. The adaptive alpha-shape remains stable when its control parameter is set to 1 and is 1.7-2.6 times faster than the classical variant, which requires geometry-specific alpha tuning. A lightweight boundary inflation post-process using a minimal dilation further improves retention by up to 2.96% with negligible unsupported activation (less than 0.08%). Overall, the distance-based method is recommended as the default due to its accuracy, stability, minimal tuning, and low cost, while the adaptive alpha-shape is a strong alternative when grid-spacing information for threshold selection is unavailable. A companion web application operationalizes the workflow end to end, enabling 2D ASCII dataset upload, parameter tuning, mask and boundary generation, and export of CNN-ready outputs.