Visual Simulation of Multiple Fluids in Computer Graphics: A State-of-the-Art Report

• Published in: Journal of computer science and technology Vol. 33; no. 3; pp. 431 - 451
• Main Authors: Ren, Bo, Yang, Xu-Yun, Lin, Ming C., Thuerey, Nils, Teschner, Matthias, Li, Chenfeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.05.2018; Springer; Springer Nature B.V; College of Computer and Control Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China%Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, U.S.A%Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, Munich 80333, Germany%Department of Computer Science, University of Freiburg, Freiburg 79098, Germany%College of Engineering, Swansea University, Swansea SA28PP, U.K
• Subjects: Algorithms; Analysis; Animation; Artificial Intelligence; Computational fluid dynamics; Computer graphics; Computer Science; Computer simulation; Data Structures and Information Theory; Engineering; Fluids; Graphics software; Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Laws, regulations and rules; Mathematical models; Numerical stability; Phase transitions; R&D; Research & development; Simulation; Simulation methods; Software Engineering; Spatial distribution; Special effects; State of the art; Survey; Theory of Computation; Visual effects; multiple fluids; physical simulation; computer graphics
• ISSN: 1000-9000; 1860-4749
• DOI: 10.1007/s11390-018-1829-0

Realistic animation of various interactions between multiple fluids, possibly undergoing phase change, is a challenging task in computer graphics. The visual scope of multi-phase multi-fluid phenomena covers complex tangled surface structures and rich color variations, which can greatly enhance visual effect in graphics applications. Describing such phenomena requires more complex models to handle challenges involving the calculation of interactions, dynamics and spatial distribution of multiple phases, which are often involved and hard to obtain real-time performance. Recently, a diverse set of algorithms have been introduced to implement the complex multi-fluid phenomena based on the governing physical laws and novel discretization methods to accelerate the overall computation while ensuring numerical stability. By sorting through the target phenomena of recent research in the broad subject of multiple fluids, this state-of-the-art report summarizes recent advances on multi-fluid simulation in computer graphics.