Monday, February 12, 2007

Moving Things Around

As I have had to revise the boundary condition code I thought I would test what does and doesn't work with moving boundaries. The big problem is always whats stable and whats accurate. Often getting both features can be tricky.

Originally I would use the velocity vector to provide a force that would then alter the velocity. Unfortunately if more than one "piece" of boundary was interacting with the particle the final velocity could be unbounded. Clearly not a ideal solution. However it did fit into the work flow better than other methods.

I have tried reflected particles and just "dead" boundary particles but have found both solutions somewhat lacking. Both are very slow, and treating density correctly is not as straightforward as it appears. Usually very small time steps are required.

Finally we have the method I'm now settled on. First we use the distance not from the boundary point but from the boundary plane that the point represents. Secondly we use a special step to update the velocity. In that the boundary only affects the velocity and only at fixed time in the update schedule. It give very nice bounded results as shown below in the movies.

There are a few points to consider however. First is that each boundary particle can affect the fluid. This means that the boundary behaviour is determined by how many particles are used to make up that boundary. Secondly there is no bounce, although that can be easily added at a later time.

So the movies consist of the same animation. One with the velocity vectors and the other with the isosurface. The tub that the water is being poured is set to hidden and the paddle does penetrate the tub. When the paddle "squished" the water between the wall and the tub, we see squirt of water. This is where the simulations would go unstable with other boundary condtions. However it should be noted that this "squish" will be very sensitive to parameters, and it will still be possible to send this into unstable regions with sufficient squishing.

Movies of moving paddle:
Raytraced Isosurface
Velocity Vector preview

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bob - I guess the preview animatiosn alone will make people very curious.
I am already! That is for sure!

Is it as warm in Vienna as in Hamburg? - It´s about 10 - 14 °C during the day. And we have february....

Harald

Anonymous said...

Hi Bob - did you make any progress?
I know I can be the pest - asking every week.
But I´m curious as h*ll.

:)

Harald

bob said...

read my new post...