High Performance Vorticity Refinement Smoke Simulation Algorithm Based on Lattice Boltzmann Method

Physically-based smoke simulation is an essential branch of computer graphics and computer simulation. This paper proposed Lattice Boltzmann method with vorticity refinement force calculated with tracked vorticity’s magnitude and direction to realize smoke simulation with high performance and realism. Vorticity’s magnitude and direction were tracked through Navier-Stokes equation and Helmholtz equation. Vorticity refinement force calculated with tracked vorticity and speed field information correspondingly was added to realize vorticity refinement and enrich details of smoke simulation, which made sure that smoke simulation results not only obey physical laws but also have high realism. Our smoke simulation model was based on Lattice Boltzmann method, which discretisizes momentum distribution function, vorticity distribution function and temperature distribution function. Smoke simulation was realized through updating of three distribution functions and vorticity direction field. Our method simulated flow process through distribution function items moving among grid points and simulated interaction between fluid particles and external force added to particles with collision terms and external force terms separately in accordance with Lattice Boltzmann method. Results of smoke simulation experiments prove that our method could simulate smoke motion with high realism and performance. As for grid resolution of 64×64×128, our algorithm could achieve real-time simulation with single GPU acceleration.