A meshless Total Lagrangian explicit dynamics algorithm for surgical simulation

Abstract

Abstract A method is presented for computing deformation of very soft tissue. The method is motivated by the need for simple, automatic model creation for real‐time simulation. The method is meshless in the sense that deformation is calculated at nodes that are not part of an element mesh. Node placement is almost arbitrary. Fully geometrically nonlinear Total Lagrangian formulation is used. Geometric integration is performed over a regular background grid that does not conform to the simulation geometry. Explicit time integration is used via the central difference method. As an example the simple but fully nonlinear Neo‐Hookean material model is employed. The results are compared with a finite element simulation to verify the usefulness of the method. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.