Abstract: Simulation of Granular Materials (like sand)
For my project I'm working on trying to implement and improve sand simulation and the general problem of the simulation of granular materials. Granular materials present an interesting simulation problem as they pose behavior that does not fully coincide with either fluids, solids, or even gases (see 3). In the field of Computer graphics, there have been 2 major approaches to simulation of granular materials, one using particles, and the alternate being a continuum approach using fluid simulation. Both approaches have their limitation, particle based approaches being limited in scale due to the complexity explosion for simulating even medium scale scenes containing billions or even trillions of sand or granular particles. Continuum approaches suffer from being able to truly handle only very macroscopic behavior, and thus lack detail at smaller scales. In addition, certain effects, like the capping of pressure in a column of sand are still not demonstrated by fluid simulation based approaches.
I will be attempting to develop a new formulation to develop a hybrid system using continuum and particle approaches using a Level-of-detail approach. I will attempt to "get the best of both worlds" to have a system that demonstrates the expected behavior of a granular system while avoiding the costly pitfalls of using either approach solely. I will also attempt to use recent developments in fluid simulation to enhance the continuum model. A list of related papers/references (this list may be expanded later):
Progress Reports/Media: