Simulating Inextensible Cloth Using Locking-free Triangle Meshes

Abstract

This paper presents an efficient method for the dynamic simulation of inextensible cloth. The triangle mesh for our cloth model is simulated using an impulse-based approach which is able to solve hard constraints. Using hard distance constraints on the edges of the triangle mesh removes too many degrees of freedom, resulting in a rigid motion. This is known as the locking problem which is typically solved by using rectangular meshes in existing impulse-based simulations. We solve this problem by using a nonconforming representation for the simulation model which unfortunately results in a discontinuous mesh. Therefore, we couple the original conforming mesh with the nonconforming elements and use it for collision handling and visualization.