Computer-Generated Animation of Fluids: An Applied Math Perspective


Abstract: Computer graphics researchers and animators have embraced computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) over the past decade. After summarizing a number of
successfully implemented CFD techniques, we examine a recently addressed problem in detail: computing interactions between solid rigid bodies and fluids, where the Rigid Fluid method is used to efficiently animate the
interplay between rigid bodies and viscous incompressible fluids with free surfaces. This technique uses distributed Lagrange multipliers to compute two-way solid-fluid couplings, alternating between treating the solids as if they were fluid and constraining the motions of those regions to obey rigid body motion. The method---straightforward to implement and incurring little computational overhead---generates realistic motion for both the solid objects and the fluid as they interact with one another.

We will assume no detailed knowledge of fluid mechanics or CFD. Many movies will be shown, including more recent results of both drops on surfaces and granular flows. This talk represents work done in collaboration with Mark Carlson, Huamin Wang, Greg Turk, Nathan Bell, and Yizhou Yu.