Monday, April 11, 2011

Initial Architecture Design

Melting Candle concept similar to Melting Ice Cubes

As a summary, my project goal is to simulate the melting of a candle from a constant heat source using a Lagrangian approach to SPH.  I've read papers on SPH and particle based simulations.  The most intriguing was Fast Particle Based Visual Simulation of Ice Melting (K. Iwasaki, H. Uchida, Y. Dobashi, and T. Nishita).  The essence of the paper describes what is needed to simulated the melting, solidifying, spliting and merging of ice.  I believe I can extrapolate the math and theory from the paper and apply it to simulation of a candle.  The difference lies in the viscosity of melted wax, and the rigidity of solid wax. I believe there will be some challenges with the rapid phase change of liquid wax while it drips off the candle.

Thursday, March 10, 2011