A Vortex Method for Bi-phasic Fluids Interacting with Rigid Bodies

Abstract

We present an accurate Lagrangian method based on vortex particles, level-sets, and immersed boundary methods, for animating the interplay between two fluids and rigid solids. We show that a vortex method is a good choice for simulating bi-phase flow, such as liquid and gas, with a good level of realism. Vortex particles are localized at the interfaces between the two fluids and within the regions of high turbulence. We gain local precision and efficiency from the stable advection permitted by the vorticity formulation. Moreover, our numerical method straightforwardly solves the two-way coupling problem between the fluids and animated rigid solids. This new approach is validated through numerical comparisons with reference experiments from the computational fluid community. We also show that the visually appealing results obtained in the CG community can be reproduced with increased efficiency and an easier implementation.