[Seminar] Graphics Seminar: Water Drops on Surfaces

[Ivan Lee]

This week, I'll be presenting the paper "Water Drops on 
Surfaces" by Huamin Wang, Peter J. Mucha, and Greg Turk from 
the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Abstract:

We present a physically-based method to enforce contact 
angles at the intersection of fluid free surfaces and solid 
objects, allowing us to simulate a variety of small-scale 
fluid phenomena including water drops on surfaces. The heart 
of this technique is our virtual surface method, which 
modifies the level set distance field representing the fluid 
surface in order to maintain an appropriate contact angle. 
The surface tension that is calculated on the contact line 
between the solid surface and liquid surface can then capture 
all interfacial tensions, including liquid-solid, liquid-air 
and solid-air tensions. We use a simple dynamic contact angle 
model to select contact angles according to the solid 
material property, water history, and the fluid front’s 
motion. Our algorithm robustly and accurately treats various 
drop shape deformations, and handles both flat and curved 
solid surfaces. Our results show that our algorithm is 
capable of realistically simulating several small-scale 
liquid phenomena such as beading and flattened drops, 
stretched and separating drops, suspended drops on curved 
surfaces, and capillary action. 




               Ivan