Real-Time High-Fidelity Surface Flow Simulation

Abstract

Surface flow phenomena, such as rain water flowing down a tree trunk and progressive water front in a shower room, are common in real life. However, compared with the 3D spatial fluid flow, these surface flow problems have been much less studied in the graphics community. To tackle this research gap, we present an efficient, robust and high-fidelity simulation approach based on the shallow-water equations. Specifically, the standard shallow-water flow model is extended to general triangle meshes with a feature-based bottom friction model, and a series of coherent mathematical formulations are derived to represent the full range of physical effects that are important for real-world surface flow phenomena. In addition, by achieving compatibility with existing 3D fluid simulators and by supporting physically realistic interactions with multiple fluids and solid surfaces, the new model is flexible and readily extensible for coupled phenomena. A wide range of simulation examples are presented to demonstrate the performance of the new approach.

A Discrete Droplet Method for Modelling Thin Film Flows

“…One of the most prominent models used is the lubrication model or the long-wave approximation [10][11][12][13][14][15][16], which takes the form of a system of fourthorder PDEs. Another popular model is the shallow water equations [17][18][19][20], which can be derived by depth integrating the Navier-Stokes equations. A thin-film model that has been subject to a lot of theoretical studies recently is the re-derivation of Navier-Stokes on manifolds [21][22][23] that assumes a film of constant height.…”