Physical Animation of Wetting Terrain and Erosion

Visual simulation of natural erosion on terrains with granular matter, like sand, soil or gravel has been a fascinating research topic in the field of computer graphics for a long time. Ability of a fluid to drastically change internal structure or external shape of terrain is an important effect in nature. While there are many particle based algorithms to improve process of terrain erosion, only few of them also take into account the water saturated in a terrain. In this paper we present a particle-based method for large scale long time progressive simulation of terrain erosion containing wet granular particles. The wetting process and the propagation through granular material is based on defining the wetness value for each particle representing the amount of water absorbed by granular particles and stored between them, as was originally proposed by Rungjiratananon [12]. We extend this model by adding a non homogeneous material to simulate differences between different types of soil-like granular material, based on physical constants like stability, plasticity and wetness. With this approach we can create a physical animation of erosion process like mass movement or mass wasting.