Analytic Eigensystems for Isotropic Membrane Energies

Abstract

We extend the approach of [Smith et al. 2019] to derive analytical expressions for the eigenvalues and eigenmatrices of an isotropic membrane energy density function $\psi : \mathbb{R}^{3x2} \to \mathbb{R}$. Clamping the eigenvalue expressions to be positive for each quadrature point of a finite element membrane simulation guarantees a positive semi-definite Hessian for the full discrete membrane energy, enabling an efficient Newton-type simulation.