Real-time Simulations of Bubbles and Foam within a ShallowWater Framework

Abstract

Bubbles and foam are important fluid phenomena on scales that we encounter in our lives every day. While different techniques to handle these effects were developed in the past years, they require a full 3D fluid solver with free surfaces and surface tension. We present a shallow water based particle model that is coupled with a smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation to demonstrate that real-time simulations of bubble and foam effects are possible with high frame rates. A shallow water simulation is used to represent the overall water volume. It is coupled to a particle-based bubble simulation with a flow field of spherical vortices. This bubble simulation is interacting with a smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation including surface tension to handle foam on the fluid surface. The realism and performance of our approach is demonstrated with several test cases that run with high frame rates on a standard PC.