Viability of OpenFOAM as the Numerical Engine for Augmented Reality SandboxDr. Elizabeth Smith, P.E.University of North Carolina at CharlotteMany augmented reality sandboxes use the Saint-Venant equations for shallow water with a second-order Runge-Kutta temporal integration. This approach delivers real time simulations for reasonable scales and mostly laminar flows. These runtimes are achieved using GPU computing. This work evaluates the open source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package OpenFOAM as an alternative to the custom implementations traditionally used. OpenFOAM was selected because many sandboxes are used in educational and research settings and CFD engines with costly licensing was not desirable. For this work, multiple terrains were created in the sandbox and the Kinect camera depth data was used to create the computational grid. The simulations included boundary conditions that removed water, via absorption and runoff, and added water, both at specific locations and over the entire terrain. Evaluation criteria include (1) the accuracy of OpenFOAM on grids generated by the depth data, (2) the ability to achieve real time simulations for laminar flows, and (3) stability of the engine for a range of terrain data. OpenFOAM was evaluated outside of the sandbox framework and on static terrains. Multiple configurations of were examined to identify best practices for the sandbox application. Integrating a more general engine, such as OpenFOAM will allow for the development of additional applications for the sandbox.

Viability of OpenFOAM as the Numerical Engine for Augmented Reality Sandbox

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/FEDSM/FEDSM2021/volume/85284

ASME 2021 Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting (FEDSM2021)

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