Aeolian Sand Movement and Interacting with Vegetation: A GPU Based Simulation and Visualization Method

• Published in: Third International Symposium on Plant Growth Modeling, Simulation, Visualization and Applications : proceedings, 9-13 November 2009, Beijing, China pp. 401 - 408
• Main Authors: Ning Wang, Bao-Gang Hu
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.11.2009
• Subjects: aeolian sand transportation; Animation; Computational fluid dynamics; Computational modeling; Computer graphics; Deformable models; Fluid dynamics; GPU; physically based modeling; procedurally based modeling; Rendering (computer graphics); Soil; vegetation; Vegetation mapping; Visualization
• ISBN: 9781769539881; 1424463297; 9781424463299
• DOI: 10.1109/PMA.2009.14

Simulation and visualization on aeolian sand movement and its interaction with vegetation are a challenging subject. In this work, we proposed a physically and procedurally based modeling and simulation method that can be used to synthesize sandy terrain with vegetation covers. For realizing a real-time simulation process, we implemented the method on the programming graphics processing unit (GPU). We tried to include significant mechanisms of sand transportation into the sand model, such as saltation and creep behaviors, while simplified the vegetation model and wind field model to make the simulation feasible and affordable. As a preliminary study, we conducted several numerical demonstrations on simple scenarios with or without vegetation. The simulation results confirmed that the proposed method is applicable for reaching visually realistic images in comparison with the real images from a desert field.