Two-way Coupling of Fluids to Reduced Deformable Bodies

Abstract

We propose a fully monolithic two-way coupling framework that couples incompressible fluids to reduced deformable bodies. Notably, the resulting linear system matrix is both symmetric and positive-definite. Our method allows for the simulation of interesting free-surface as well as underwater phenomena, enabling the use of reduced deformable bodies as full-fledged simulation primitives alongside rigid bodies and deformable bodies. Momentum conservation is crucial to obtaining physically correct and realistic-looking motion in a fluid environment, and we achieve this by following previous work to describe reduced deformable bodies using both a rigid frame and a reduced space deformation component. Our approach partitions forces and impulses between the reduced space and the rigid frame of the reduced deformable bodies using a projection scheme that cleanly accounts for momentum losses in the reduced space via corrections in the rigid frame, resulting in a new theoretical formulation for the momentum-conserving reduced deformable body. We demonstrate that robust and stable contact, collision, articulation, and two-way coupling with fluids are all attainable in a straightforward way using this new formulation. Compared with fully deformable objects, our framework consumes less memory and scales better in large scenes, while still nicely approximating the deformation effects.