Physical Process Based Fluid Simulation

Currently, in many Virtual Reality Systems, there is an increasing need for simulating the fluid behaviors dynamically. To obtain more realistic scene, simulating physically realistic fluid behaviors is very important. Many fluid models just present only one aspect of fluid, and can' t present some important properties simultaneously, such as speed, heightfield etc. .which are necessary in many fluid simulation systems. Although the traditional raytraced-based rendering algorithms can obtain high quality graphics, they can' t be used in Real-Time Systems.This paper investigates the existing fluid models and rendering algorithms firstly. Then, a pressure-based height field fluid model is proposed and the pressure to simulate the fluid surface height is justified. The rendering algorithms based on the use of texture maps and piecewise approximate Fresnel formula of reflection is proposed after analyzing the Fresnel formula. To get texture maps at appropriate size, an accelerated method for Wei and Levoy' s basic algorithm (for short, WL algorithm) is presented. Finallly, a real-time fluid simulation system is implemented with VC++ and OpenGL.The pressure-based height field fluid model can present many important properties of fluid and thus can be used widely. A Real-Time System can be achieved with the model and rendering algorithms proposed in this paper. Further research is how to improve the speed of simulation system by considering the properties of graphic hardware and presenting the illumination in texture maps.