Nonlinear cloth simulation with isogeometric analysis

Physically based cloth simulation with nonlinear behaviors is studied in this article by employing isogeometric analysis (IGA) for the surface deformation in 3D space. State-of-the-art simulation techniques, which primarily rely on the triangular mesh to calculate physical points on the cloth directly, require a large number of degrees of freedom. An effective method for the cloth deformation that employs high-order continuous B-spline surfaces dependent on control points is proposed. This method leads to the merit of fewer degrees of freedom and superior smoothness. The deformation gradient on the high-order IGA element is then represented by the gradient of the B-spline function. An iterative method for solving the nonlinear optimization transferred from the implicit integration and a direct implicit–explicit method are derived on the basis of elastic force calculation to improve efficiency. The knots of the representation are effectively utilized in collision detection and response to reduce the computational burden. Experiments of nonlinear cloth simulation demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method considering performance and efficiency, achieving accurate, efficient, and stable deformation.