Immediate Buckling Model to Overcome the Structural Instability in Cloth Simulation

Introduction The material behavior that most distinguishes textile fabrics from other sheet materials is the easy-buckling phenomenon. The technique presented here simulates the fabric buckling phenomenon in a realistic, yet also stable way. Significant improvements in both the stability and realism were made possible by overcoming the buckling instability as well as the numerical instability. The instability caused by buckling arises from a structural instability and therefore cannot be avoided by simply employing an implicit time integration method as in [1]. Addition of a damping force may help to avoid instabilities; however, it can significantly degrade the realism of the cloth motion. In this paper, a new buckling model based on immediate buckling assumption is proposed. A cloth element is assumed to reach a stable configuration immediately once it begins to buckle. This assumption makes it possible to simulate the fabric buckling stably without introducing any fictitious damping force. Consequently, it produces highly responsive cloth motion and allows the use of a large fixed time step in simulation of cloth.