Stable Orthotropic Materials

Abstract

Isotropic Finite Element Method (FEM) deformable object simulations are widely used in computer graphics. Several applications (wood, plants, muscles) require modeling the directional dependence of the material elastic properties in three orthogonal directions. We investigate orthotropic materials, a special class of anisotropic materials where the shear stresses are decoupled from normal stresses. Orthotropic materials generalize transversely isotropic materials, by exhibiting different stiffnesses in three orthogonal directions. Orthotropic materials are, however, parameterized by nine values that are difficult to tune in practice, as poorly adjusted settings easily lead to simulation instabilities. We present a user-friendly approach to setting these parameters that is guaranteed to be stable. Our approach is intuitive as it extends the familiar intuition known from isotropic materials. We demonstrate our technique by augmenting linear corotational FEM implementations with orthotropic materials.