Physically based modeling and rendering of avalanches

Abstract

Avalanche is a natural disaster in the snow-covered mountainous area in winter, which may cause great disasters to human life and property. It is also a danger for skiers and climbers. This paper presents a new physically based algorithm to simulate the dynamic avalanches under position-based dynamics framework. To realistically simulate avalanches' dynamic characteristics, we introduce the Bingham plastic model from geodynamics to model snow flow motion in avalanches. The interaction between snow flow in the avalanche and the surrounding objects is simulated by a level set-based two-way fluid-solid coupling model. We also propose static and kinetic friction mixed model to determine the accumulated transition of the avalanche. To create an avalanche scene with more realistic details, we employ an aerodynamics-based snow drag force model to generate snow fog effect. Finally, by choosing different criterion shear rate and friction parameters, different kinds of wet and dry avalanche scenes are realistically rendered. Compared with the real photographs of avalanches, our simulated results are quite satisfactory. IntroductionPhysically based modeling and rendering of natural phenomena have always been a hotspot of computer graphics. Among them, the simulation of disaster phenomena recently receives more attention from researchers, government, and industry, as they can be found in many applications such as disaster prevention and rescue, sports safety, game design, movie and

Snow and Ice Animation Methods in Computer Graphics

“…Liu et al [LCZ*21] propose a particle‐based algorithm (Eq. 7) to simulate dynamic avalanches under the position‐based dynamics (PBD) framework [BKCW14] (Fig.…”

“…Avalanche simulation methods (a) physically‐based avalanche simulation by Lui et al [LCZ*21], (b) avalanche generated using Houdini particles in [Kap03]. …”

Digital 3D Animation of Powder-Snow Avalanches

“…Tillgren (2020) used a procedural scheme based on Voronoi meshes to generate slab fractures on snow avalanches. Recently, Liu et al (2021) presented a Position-based Dynamics (PBD) framework combined with the Bingham viscoplastic model to simulate snow avalanches. To the author's knowledge, these few references are the only publications directly or indirectly related to the digital animation of snow avalanches.…”