Overview
With an original positioning across Computer Graphics and Computational Mechanics, the ELAN team strives to simulate the physics of visually rich mechanical phenomena, such as cloth folding, ribbon coiling, plant growth, granular flowing, or hair entangling. Target applications encompass the digital entertainment industry (e.g., feature film animation, special effects), as well as virtual prototyping for the mechanical engineering industry (e.g., aircraft manufacturing, cosmetology); though very different, these two application fields require predictive and scalable models for capturing complex mechanical phenomena at the macroscopic scale. An orthogonal objective is the improvement of our understanding of natural physical and biological processes involving slender structures (such as plant growth, granular flows, DNA supercoiling), through active collaborations with soft matter physicists. To achieve its goals, the team is striving to master as finely as possible the entire modeling pipeline, involving a pluridisciplinary combination of scientific skills across Mechanics and Physics, Applied Mathematics, and Computer Science.
The ELAN team is focussed on three main research axes:
- The numerical modeling of slender elastic structures (rods, plates, and shells), especially when prone to large displacements and buckling
- The discrete handling of frictional contact problems, within the framework of nonsmooth contact mechanics
- The modeling, analysis and solving of inverse elastic design problems with applications in non-invasive parameter estimation.
What's new
Nonsmooth mechanics: from France to Hollywood
A mediation paper, written from interviews of Florence Bertails-Descoubes, Bernard Brogliato and Gilles Daviet, traces back the success of nonsmooth mechanics for handling contact and friction in feature film movies. Nonsmooth mechanics was especially developed thanks to the pioneering work of Jean-Jacques Moreau in Montpellier, France (mainly for applications to…
Fibres, ribbons and feathers: 3 papers to be presented at ACM Siggraph 2024!
In 2024 the ELAN team will present three papers at ACM Siggraph 2024 in Denver: Fibres (TOG paper): a new exact detection scheme between two smooth curves, which removes spurrious artifacts in contact forces with fibres assemblies. Our algorithm is particularly well-suited for the super-helix discretisation of Kirchhoff thin elastic…
