Interactive coupling between a tree and raindrops

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach for simulating the dynamic coupling between a tree and raindrops based on physical deformation and fluid simulation. By the approach, tree animation in the rain can be simulated in a two-resolution way: branch motion and leaf motion. The branch is represented by the Euler-Bernoulli beam model, and the leaf petiole is represented by the three-prism elastic model. Interaction coupling liquid motion on the hydrophilic surface with a flexible petiole is well implemented by a special design. To simplify the computation process, instead of the computation-intensive three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations, shallow water equations are used to simulate the water dynamics together with the whole leaf deformation. Simulation has been also made to various phenomena incurred from the interactive coupling. These include, among others, part of impacting raindrops splashing into the air with the remaining flowing along the slant of the leaf and merging into larger ones or hanging on the blade boundary, with the leaf rebounding and vibrating after the drops fall off the leaf. A level-of-detail approach is exploited to accelerate rendering in views of different distances. The experimental results illustrate that the approach can be applied to efficiently generate realistic details of the interactive coupling between a tree and raindrops. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.