An Efficient Solver for Two-way Coupling Rigid Bodies with Incompressible Flow

Mridul Aanjaneya

We present an efficient solver for monolithic two-way coupled simulation of rigid bodies with incompressible fluids that is robust to poor conditioning of the coupled system in the presence of large density ratios between the solid and the fluid. Our method leverages ideas from the theory of Domain Decomposition, and uses a hybrid combination of direct and iterative solvers that exploits the low-dimensional nature of the solid equations. We observe that a single Multigrid V-cycle for the fluid equations serves as a very effective preconditioner for solving the Schur-complement system using Conjugate Gradients, which is the main computational bottleneck in our pipeline. We use spectral analysis to give some theoretical insights behind this observation. Our method is simple to implement, is entirely assembly-free besides the solid equations, allows for the use of large time steps because of the monolithic formulation, and remains stable even when the iterative solver is terminated early. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method on several challenging examples of two-way coupled simulation of smoke and water with rigid bodies. To illustrate that our method is applicable to other problems, we also show an example of underwater bubble simulation.

An Efficient Solver for Two-way Coupling Rigid Bodies with Incompressible Flow

Liquid Splash Modeling with Neural Networks

Kiwon Um, Xiangyu Hu, Nils Thuerey

This paper proposes a new data-driven approach to model detailed splashes for liquid simulations with neural networks. Our model learns to generate small-scale splash detail for the fluid-implicit-particle method using training data acquired from physically parameterized, high resolution simulations. We use neural networks to model the regression of splash formation using a classifier together with a velocity modifier. For the velocity modification, we employ a heteroscedastic model. We evaluate our method for different spatial scales, simulation setups, and solvers. Our simulation results demonstrate that our model significantly improves visual fidelity with a large amount of realistic droplet formation and yields splash detail much more efficiently than finer discretizations.

Liquid Splash Modeling with Neural Networks

Turbulent Micropolar SPH Fluids with Foam

Jan Bender, Dan Koschier, Tassilo Kugelstadt, Marcel Weiler

In this paper we introduce a novel micropolar material model for the simulation of turbulent inviscid fluids. The governing equations are solved by using the concept of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). As already investigated in previous works, SPH fluid simulations suffer from numerical diffusion which leads to a lower vorticity, a loss in turbulent details and finally in less realistic results. To solve this problem we propose a micropolar fluid model. The micropolar fluid model is a generalization of the classical Navier-Stokes equations, which are typically used in computer graphics to simulate fluids. In contrast to the classical Navier-Stokes model, micropolar fluids have a microstructure and therefore consider the rotational motion of fluid particles. In addition to the linear velocity field these fluids also have a field of microrotation which represents existing vortices and provides a source for new ones. However, classical micropolar materials are viscous and the translational and the rotational motion are coupled in a dissipative way. Since our goal is to simulate turbulent fluids, we introduce a novel modified micropolar material for inviscid fluids with a non-dissipative coupling. Our model can generate realistic turbulences, is linear and angular momentum conserving, can be easily integrated in existing SPH simulation methods and its computational overhead is negligible. Another important visual feature of turbulent liquids is foam. Therefore, we present a post-processing method which considers microrotation in the foam particle generation. It works completely automatic and requires only one user-defined parameter to control the amount of foam.

Turbulent Micropolar SPH Fluids with Foam

Example-based turbulence style transfer

Syuhei Sato, Yoshinori Dobashi, T. Kim, and Tomoyuki Nishita

Generating realistic fluid simulations remains computationally expensive, and animators can expend enormous effort trying to achieve a desired motion. To reduce such costs, several methods have been developed in which high-resolution turbulence is synthesized as a post process. Since global motion can then be obtained using a fast, low-resolution simulation, less effort is needed to create a realistic animation with the desired behavior. While much research has focused on accelerating the low-resolution simulation, the problem controlling the behavior of the turbulent, high-resolution motion has received little attention. In this paper, we show that style transfer methods from image editing can be adapted to transfer the turbulent style of an existing fluid simulation onto a new one. We do this by extending example-based image synthesis methods to handle velocity fields using a combination of patch-based and optimization-based texture synthesis. Importantly, this approach allows us to incorporate the incompressibility condition. Using our method, a user can easily and intuitively create high-resolution fluid animations that have a desired turbulent motion.

Example-based turbulence style transfer

Extended Narrow Band FLIP for Liquid Simulations

Takahiro Sato, Chris Wojtan, Nils Thuerey, Takeo Igarashi, Ryoichi Ando

The Fluid Implicit Particle method (FLIP) reduces numerical dissipation by combining particles with grids. To improve performance, the subsequent narrow band FLIP method (NB-FLIP) uses a FLIP-based fluid simulation only near the liquid surface and a traditional grid-based fluid simulation away from the surface. This spatially-limited FLIP simulation significantly reduces the number of particles and alleviates a computational bottleneck. In this paper, we extend the NB-FLIP idea even further, by allowing a simulation to transition between a FLIP-like fluid simulation and a grid-based simulation in arbitrary locations, not just near the surface. This approach leads to even more savings in memory and computation, because we can concentrate the particles only in areas where they are needed. More importantly, this new method allows us to seamlessly transition to smooth implicit surface geometry wherever the particle-based simulation is unnecessary. Consequently, our method leads to a practical algorithm for avoiding the noisy surface artifacts associated with particle-based liquid simulations, while simultaneously maintaining the benefits of a FLIP simulation in regions of dynamic motion.

Extended Narrow Band FLIP for Liquid Simulations

Learning Three-Dimensional Flow for Interactive Aerodynamic Design

Nobuyuki Umetani, Bernd Bickel

We present a data-driven technique to instantly predict how fluid flows around various three-dimensional objects. Such simulation is useful for computational fabrication and engineering, but is usually computationally expensive since it requires solving the Navier-Stokes equation for many time steps. To accelerate the process, we propose a machine learning framework which predicts aerodynamic forces and velocity and pressure fields given a three-dimensional shape input. Handling detailed free-form three-dimensional shapes in a data-driven framework is challenging because machine learning approaches usually require a consistent parametrization of input and output. We present a novel PolyCube maps-based parametrization that can be computed for three-dimensional shapes at interactive rates. This allows us to efficiently learn the nonlinear response of the flow using a Gaussian process regression. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach for the interactive design and optimization of a car body

Learning Three-Dimensional Flow for Interactive Aerodynamic Design

Scalable Laplacian Eigenfluids

Qiaodong Cui, Pradeep Sen, Theodore Kim

The Laplacian Eigenfunction method for fluid simulation, which we refer to as Eigenfluids, introduced an elegant new way to capture intricate fluid flows with near-zero viscosity. However, the approach does not scale well, as the memory cost grows prohibitively with the number of eigenfunctions. The method also lacks generality, because the dynamics are constrained to a closed box with Dirichlet boundaries, while open, Neumann boundaries are also needed in most practical scenarios. To address these limitations, we present a set of analytic eigenfunctions that supports uniform Neumann and Dirichlet conditions along each domain boundary, and show that by carefully applying the discrete sine and cosine transforms, the storage costs of the eigenfunctions can be made completely negligible. The resulting algorithm is both faster and more memory-efficient than previous approaches, and able to achieve lower viscosities than similar pseudo-spectral methods. We are able to surpass the scalability of the original Laplacian Eigenfunction approach by over two orders of magnitude when simulating rectangular domains. Finally, we show that the formulation allows forward scattering to be directed in a way that is not possible with any other method.

Scalable Laplacian Eigenfluids

Automatically Distributing Eulerian and Hybrid Fluid Simulations in the Cloud

Omid Mashayekhi, Chinmayee Shah, Hang Qu, Andrew Lim, Philip Levis
Distributing a simulation across many machines can drastically speed up computations and increase detail. The computing cloud provides tremendous computing resources, but weak service guarantees force programs to manage significant system complexity: nodes, networks, and storage occasionally perform poorly or fail. We describe Nimbus, a system that automatically distributes grid-based and hybrid simulations across cloud computing nodes. The main simulation loop is sequential code and launches distributed computations across many cores. The simulation on each core runs as if it is stand-alone: Nimbus automatically stitches these simulations into a single, larger one. To do this efficiently, Nimbus introduces a four-layer data model that translates between the contiguous, geometric objects used by simulation libraries and the replicated, fine-grained objects managed by its underlying cloud computing runtime. Using PhysBAM particle level set fluid simulations, we demonstrate that Nimbus can run higher detail simulations faster, distribute simulations on up to 512 cores, and run enormous simulations (10243 cells). Nimbus automatically manages these distributed simulations, balancing load across nodes and recovering from failures. Implementations of PhysBAM water and smoke simulations as well as an open source heat-diffusion simulation show that Nimbus is general and can support complex simulations.

Automatically Distributing Eulerian and Hybrid Fluid Simulations in the Cloud

An Advection-Reflection Solver for Detail-Preserving Fluid Simulation

Jonas Zehnder, Rahul Narain, Bernhard Thomaszewski

Advection-projection methods for fluid animation are widely appreciated for their stability and efficiency. However, the projection step dissipates energy from the system, leading to artificial viscosity and suppression of small-scale details. We propose an alternative approach for detail-preserving fluid animation that is surprisingly simple and effective. We replace the energy-dissipating projection operator applied at the end of a simulation step by an energy-preserving reflection operator applied at mid-step.We show that doing so leads to two orders of magnitude reduction in energy loss, which in turn yields vastly improved detail-preservation. We evaluate our reflection solver on a set of 2D and 3D numerical experiments and show that it compares favorably to state-of-the-art methods. Finally, our method integrates seamlessly with existing projection-advection solvers and requires very little additional implementation.

An Advection-Reflection Solver for Detail-Preserving Fluid Simulation

A Material Point Method for Thin Shells with Frictional Contact

Qi Guo, Xuchen Han, Chuyuan Fu, Theodore Gast, Rasmus Tamstorf, Joseph Teran

We present a novel method for simulation of thin shells with frictional contact using a combination of the Material Point Method (MPM) and subdivision finite elements. The shell kinematics are assumed to follow a continuum shell model which is decomposed into a Kirchhoff-Love motion that rotates the mid-surface normals followed by shearing and compression/extension of the material along the mid-surface normal. We use this decomposition to design an elastoplastic constitutive model to resolve frictional contact by decoupling resistance to contact and shearing from the bending resistance components of stress. We show that by resolving frictional contact with a continuum approach, our hybrid Lagrangian/Eulerian approach is capable of simulating challenging shell contact scenarios with hundreds of thousands to millions of degrees of freedom. Without the need for collision detection or resolution, our method runs in a few minutes per frame in these high resolution examples. Furthermore we show that our technique naturally couples with other traditional MPM methods for simulating granular and related materials.

A Material Point Method for Thin Shells with Frictional Contact