IPAB Workshop-09/03/2023

Title: Meshfree Tearing and Cracking of Thin Sheets

Abstract: Tearing and fracturing of thin materials like metal and frail glass is a central problem in computer graphics, and many other scientific and engineering applications. However, existing techniques that especially use triangle mesh representations for measuring singular crack-tip stresses require frequent mesh refinements for ensuring that fracture paths yield perceptively complex and unique patterns due to microscopic variations in this crack-tip stress. We present a meshfree approach to simulating this dynamic tearing and fracturing of thin materials with bending resistance, using the KirchhoffLove model and the Non-uniform Rational B-spline (NURBS) representation of surfaces. Damage, which manifests as cracks or tears, is propagated by tracking the evolution of a scalar phase field in the co-dimensional manifold. A meshfree moving least-squares NURBS is adopted, which we use to introduce strong discontinuity along the crack path. Our approach is capable of simulating challenging scenarios of tearing and fracture in volumetric thin shells without the need for explicit treatments of crack propagation, collision detection, and resolution.