Physically-Based Fluid Modeling using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

Masters Thesis by
Trina M. Roy
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
1995



SUMMARY

Presented is a new method of modeling fluid for computer graphics using particle systems with fluid dynamics. Existing modeling techniques use particle systems independently or in conjunction with molecular dynamics. While successful for certain situations these methods do not model the large scale movement of fluid in an accurate physically-based manner. The goals here were to establish a physically based model of fluid flow with "blobby" surface rendering in order to create fast, realistic animation. The realism was achieved through the use of fluid dynamics equations from a computational fluid dynamics method known as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics. Unfortunately the fast surface animation was not achieved. Parallelization techniques were used to improve the speed of both the fluid dynamics calculations and the surface generation. The performance of the dynamics calculations was improved, but the surface generation was still a bottleneck. Other more efficient methods of surface generation need to be researched, as well as the inclusion of other hydrodynamic phenomena such as melting and cooling.
 
 




TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1.1. Previous Fluid Modeling Methods

Particle Systems and Fluid Dynamics

2.1. Introduction to Particle Systems
2.1.1. Particle Attributes
2.1.2. Particle Dynamics
2.1.3. Collision Detection and Response
2.1.4. Particle Rendering
2.2. Introduction to Fluid Dynamics
2.2.1. Computational Fluid Dynamics
2.2.2. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics
2.2.3. Adaptation For Incompressible Flow

Implementation

3.1. Particle Attributes
3.2. Data Structures
3.3. Dynamics
3.4. Obstacles
3.5. Rendering
3.6. Parallelization Methods
3.7. Software Architecture

Results

4.1 Interactivity Tests
4.2 Drop Tests

Conclusions and Future Work

Cited Literature

Appendix