‘Fluid Simulation for Computer Graphics’reading notes 1

I put a reading notes 1 for this book weeks ago. But at that time I didn’t get the general idea of Fluid Simulation though technical details are digested well (weird!)

Someone from Internet suggests that the first paper to read for fluid simulation is [Stam 99] – BTW, Jos Stam is a senior researcher in Autodesk (WOOHOO!). I downloaded and printed it, then had a glance of its first several sections. – The part for Navier-Stokes Equation is very tasty, that helps me understand this equation a lot.

After that, I got back to this book again. It feels much better now – I got the gist this time, finally. So I finish reading the first 2 chapters quite fast.

The key for FS, is still the Navier-Stokes Equation, which is essentially another expression of {F = ma}. It involves current velocity, body forces(gravity, and user-defined forces, etc.), viscosity(attraction forces between molecules), pressure(the repulsion forces between the fluid molecules I think, which is also known as incompressibility). This equation provides the information for a particle to evolve in velocity, so to get the current particle position.

OK, next we will define the aspect to view the motions. Stick to the ground? (Eulerian Viewpoint) Or stick to the moving particles? (Lagrangian viewpoint) It is said the former one is more widely used. As extension, staggered grid tech is used because of some numerical details.

All right, then calculation. Since FS is a ‘continuous’ action, PDE(partial differential equation) is served as the basic maths tool. We first need to split the Navier-Stokes equation into several parts, which will simplify our calculation.

Some critical topics as viscosity and boundary condition will be covered in detail in the later chapters.