Modeling inelastic deformation

Abstract

We continue our development of physically-based models for animating nonrigid objects in simulated physical environments. Our prior work treats the special case of objects that undergo perfectly elastic deformations. Real materials, however, exhibit a rich variety of inelastic phenomena. For instance, objects may restore themselves to their natural shapes slowly, or perhaps only partially upon removal of forces that cause deformation. Moreover, the deformation may depend on the history of applied forces. The present paper proposes inelastically deformable models for use in computer graphics animation. These dynamic models tractably simulate three canonical inelastic behaviors---viscoelasticity, plasticity, and fracture. Viscous and plastic processes within the models evolve a reference component, which describes the natural shape, according to yield and creep relationships that depend on applied force and/or instantaneous deformation. Simple fracture mechanics result from internal processes that introduce local discontinuities as a function of the instantaneous deformations measured through the model. We apply our inelastically deformable models to achieve novel computer graphics effects.