In this thesis, we present a geometrically exact beam theory and a corresponding displacement-based finite-element model for modeling, analysis and natural-looking animation of highly flexible beam components of multi-body systems undergoing huge static/dynamic rigid-elastic deformations. By using Jaumann strains, concepts of local displacements and orthogonal virtual rotations, and three Euler angles to exactly describe the coordinate transformation between the undeformed and deformed configurations, the beam theory can fully explain geometric nonlinearities and initial curvatures. In order to demonstrate the accuracy and capability of this nonlinear beam element, we perform nonlinear static and dynamic analysis of two highly flexible beams examples, which include the twisting of a circular ring into three small rings and the spinup of a flexible helicopter rotor blade. We use this method to analyze helicopter rotor blades' spinup dynamics and to simulate helicopter flight starting from takeoff, loiter, and then landing. These two numerical examples proved that the proposed nonlinear beam element is accurate and versatile for modeling, analysis and 3D rendering and animation of multi-body systems that contain highly flexible beam components.

The booming computer games and animated movie industries continue to drive the graphics community's seemingly insatiable search for increased realism, believability, ad speed. To achieve the quality expected by audiences of today's games and movies, programmers need to understand and implement physics-based animation. To provide this understanding, this book is written to teach students and practitioners and theory behind the mathematical models and techniques required for physics-based animation. It does not teach the basic principles of animation, but rather how to transform theoretical techniques into practical skills. It details how the mathematical models are derived from physical and mathematical principles, and explains how these mathematical models are solved in an efficient, robust, and stable manner with a computer. This impressive and comprehensive volume covers all the issues involved in physics-based animation, including collision detection, geometry, mechanics, differential equations, matrices, quaternions, and more. There is excellent coverage of collision detection algorithms and a detailed overview of a physics system. In addition, numerous examples are provided along with detailed pseudo code for most of the algorithms. This book is ideal for students of animation, researchers in the field, and professionals working in the games and movie industries. Topics Covered: * The Kinematics: Articulated Figures, Forward and Inverse Kinematics, Motion Interpolation * Multibody Animation: Particle Systems, Continuum Models with Finite Differences, the Finite Element Method, Computational Fluid Dynamics * Collision Detection: Broad and Narrow Phase Collision Detection, Contact Determination, Bounding Volume Hierarchies, Feature-and Volume-Based Algorithms

The area of simulated human figures is an active research area in computer graphics, and Norman Badler's group at the University of Pennsylvania is one of the leaders in the field. This book summarizes the state of the art in simulating human figures, discusses many of the interesting application areas, and makes some assumptions and predictions about where the field is going.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the conference on Haptics: Generating and Perceiving Tangible Sensations, held in Amsterdam, Netherlands in July 2010.

Provides an introduction to modern object-oriented design principles and applications for the fast-growing area of modeling and simulation Covers the topic of multi-domain system modeling and design with applications that have components from several areas Serves as a reference for the Modelica language as well as a comprehensive overview of application model libraries for a number of application domains

Mass-spring systems are considered the simplest and most intuitive of all deformable models. They are computationally efficient, and can handle large deformations with ease. But they suffer several intrinsic limitations. In this book a modified mass-spring system for physically based deformation modeling that addresses the limitations and solves them elegantly is presented. Several implementations in modeling breast mechanics, heart mechanics and for elastic images registration are presented.