28 October 2019

High fidelity simulation of corotational linear FEM for incompressible materials

Robotics & Computational Mechanics

High fidelity simulation of incompressible materials using corotational linear FEM

Authors

Mihai Francu, Arni Asgeirsson, and Kenny Erleben

Abstract

We present a novel method of simulating incompressible materials undergoing large deformation without locking artifacts. We apply it for simulating silicone soft robots with a Poisson ratio close to 0.5. The new approach is based on the mixed finite element method (FEM) using a pressure-displacement formulation; the deviatoric deformation is still handled in a traditional fashion. We support large deformations without volume increase using the corotational formulation of linear elasticity. Stability is ensured by an implicit integration scheme which always reduces to a sparse linear system. For even more deformation accuracy we support higher-order simulation through the use of Bernstein-Bézier polynomials.

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtpU84KDFgM