Underwater rigid body dynamics

S Weißmann, U Pinkall - ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 2012 - dl.acm.org
ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 2012dl.acm.org
We show that the motion of rigid bodies under water can be realistically simulated by
replacing the usual inertia tensor and scalar mass by the so-called Kirchhoff tensor. This
allows us to model fluid-body interaction without simulating the surrounding fluid at all. We
explain some of the phenomena that arise and compare our results against real
experiments. It turns out that many real scenarios (sinking bodies, balloons) can be matched
using a single, hand-tuned scaling parameter. We describe how to integrate our method into …
We show that the motion of rigid bodies under water can be realistically simulated by replacing the usual inertia tensor and scalar mass by the so-called Kirchhoff tensor. This allows us to model fluid-body interaction without simulating the surrounding fluid at all. We explain some of the phenomena that arise and compare our results against real experiments. It turns out that many real scenarios (sinking bodies, balloons) can be matched using a single, hand-tuned scaling parameter. We describe how to integrate our method into an existing physics engine, which makes underwater rigid body dynamics run in real time.
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