Rod-Bonded Discrete Element Method

Abstract

The Bonded Discrete Element Method (BDEM) has raised interests in the graphics community in recent years because of its good performance in fracture simulations. However, current explicit BDEM usually needs to work under very small time steps to avoid numerical instability. We propose a new BDEM, namely Rod-BDEM (RBDEM), which uses Cosserat energy and yields integrable forces and torques. We further derive a novel Cosserat rod discretization method to effectively represent the three-dimensional topological connections between discrete elements. Then, a complete implicit BDEM system integrating the appropriate fracture model and contact model is constructed using the implicit Euler integration scheme. Our method allows high Young’s modulus and larger time steps in elastic deformation, breaking, cracking, and impacting, achieving up to 8 times speed up of the total simulation.

Keywords

• Discrete element method
• Physically based animation
• Fracture simulation
• Elastic rods