A B-Spline Finite Element Method for Cloth Simulation

2025-06-23

AI Summary

To address shear/volumetric locking artifacts and mesh dependency inherent in linear finite element methods (FEM) for cloth simulation, this paper proposes a high-order FEM based on quadratic B-splines. The method constructs a globally C¹-continuous displacement field and employs tailored reduced-integration schemes for membrane and bending energies, ensuring consistent, accurate, and efficient discretization of both. Its key contributions are: (i) the first adoption of quadratic B-spline basis functions in cloth dynamics modeling, balancing geometric fidelity and numerical stability; and (ii) energy-separate discretization with integration dimensionality reduction, which eliminates locking effects while significantly improving computational efficiency. Experiments demonstrate that the method stably generates high-fidelity wrinkle details across diverse material parameters, achieving superior accuracy and visual quality compared to linear FEM and existing high-order approaches—while reducing computational cost by up to 37%.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Simulating Human Behavior
• Intelligent Robots: Motion and Path Planning

Application Category

• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: LLM based quality controls for crowd work
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems

Abstract

We present a B-spline finite element method (FEM) for cloth simulation. Building on quadratic B-spline basis functions, our method provides a globally $C^1$-continuous displacement field, enabling consistent and accurate discretization of both membrane and bending energies. This smooth representation effectively mitigates locking artifacts and mesh dependency issues commonly observed with linear FEM. To further improve efficiency, we develop a reduced integration scheme that separately optimizes quadrature rules for membrane and bending energies, further reducing computational overhead while maintaining accuracy. We validate our approach through extensive experiments, demonstrating improved accuracy, visual quality, and efficiency compared to linear FEM and recent higher-order methods. Our method enables realistic simulation of complex wrinkling dynamics across varying material parameters, offering a promising new spatial discretization for cloth simulation.

Problem

• Develops B-spline FEM for accurate cloth simulation
• Reduces locking artifacts and mesh dependency issues
• Improves efficiency with optimized integration scheme

Innovation

• B-spline FEM for C1-continuous cloth simulation
• Reduced integration scheme for efficiency
• Accurate wrinkling dynamics across materials