Simulating the Behavior of Droplets

What is it about?

In many industrial and cinematic applications it is important to animate droplets in a physically plausible manner. We present a new method to simulate the behavior of droplets and small-scale fluid bodies in general. For this, we fomulate computation procedures for pressure, surface tension and friction between droplets and an underlying surface. Together, these three forces describe droplet dynamics quite well and allow us to realistically replicate the motion of droplets.

Featured Image

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Why is it important?

While surface tension and pressure have been widely studied in the graphics community, until now, there are few appraches that consider the frictional resistance droplets experience when resting on inclined surfaces. As a consequence, most of the existing approaches can not simulate droplets coming to rest on a slope, nor can they replicate the charactersistic stick-slip transitions of droplets when they start to roll down a window pane. With our simulation method, we are able to replicate these phenomena which are crucial for perceived realism and physically correct behavior of simulated droplets.