An edge-based computationally efficient formulation of Saint Venant-Kirchhoff tetrahedral finite elements

  • Authors:
  • Ryo Kikuuwe;Hiroaki Tabuchi;Motoji Yamamoto

  • Affiliations:
  • Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan;Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan;Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

This article describes a computationally efficient formulation and an algorithm for tetrahedral finite-element simulation of elastic objects subject to Saint Venant-Kirchhoff (StVK) material law. The number of floating point operations required by the algorithm is in the range of 15% to 27% for computing the vertex forces from a given set of vertex positions, and 27% to 38% for the tangent stiffness matrix, in comparison to a well-optimized algorithm directly derived from the conventional Total Lagrangian formulation. In the new algorithm, the data is associated with edges and tetrahedron-sharing edge-pairs (TSEPs), as opposed to tetrahedra, to avoid redundant computation. Another characteristic of the presented formulation is that it reduces to that of a spring-network model by simply ignoring all the TSEPs. The technique is demonstrated through an interactive application involving haptic interaction, being combined with a linearized implicit integration technique employing a preconditioned conjugate gradient method.