Lattice Gas Cellular Automata for Computational Fluid Animation

The past two decades showed a rapid growing of physically-based modeling of fluids for computer graphics applications. In this area, a common top down approach is to model the fluid dynamics by Navier-Stokes equations and apply a numerical techniques such as Finite Differences or Finite Elements for the simulation. In this paper we focus on fluid modeling through Lattice Gas Cellular Automata (LGCA) for computer graphics applications. LGCA are discrete models based on point particles that move on a lattice, according to suitable and simple rules in order to mimic a fully molecular dynamics. By Chapman-Enskog expansion, a known multiscale technique in this area, it can be demonstrated that the Navier-Stokes model can be reproduced by the LGCA technique. Thus, with LGCA we get a fluid model that does not require solution of complicated equations. Therefore, we combine the advantage of the low computational cost of LGCA and its ability to mimic the realistic fluid dynamics to develop a new animating framework for computer graphics applications. In this work, we discuss the theoretical elements of our proposal and show experimental results.