An Induce-on-Boundary Magnetostatic Solver for Grid-Based Ferrofluids

1Peking University  2Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence
SIGGRAPH 2024 (Journal Track)

*Joint First Authors        Corresponding Authors

Ferrofluid motion driven by changing magnetic fields: the fluid forms spikes, then is pulled upward by a top magnet, and falls back after the magnet is removed.

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel Induce-on-Boundary (IoB) solver designed to address the magnetostatic governing equations of ferrofluids. The IoB solver is based on a single-layer potential and utilizes only the surface point cloud of the object, offering a lightweight, fast, and accurate solution for calculating magnetic fields. Compared to existing methods, it eliminates the need for complex linear system solvers and maintains minimal computational complexities. Moreover, it can be seamlessly integrated into conventional fluid simulators without compromising boundary conditions. Through extensive theoretical analysis and experiments, we validate both the convergence and scalability of the IoB solver, achieving state-of-the-art performance. Additionally, a straightforward coupling approach is proposed and executed to showcase the solver's effectiveness when integrated into a grid-based fluid simulation pipeline, allowing for realistic simulations of representative ferrofluid instabilities.

Demo: Normal-Field Instability

Demo: Labyrinthine Instability

Demo: Rigid Bodies

BibTeX

@article{10.1145/3658124,
  author = {Ni, Xingyu and Wang, Ruicheng and Wang, Bin and Chen, Baoquan},
  title = {An Induce-on-Boundary Magnetostatic Solver for Grid-Based Ferrofluids},
  year = {2024},
  issue_date = {July 2024},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  volume = {43},
  number = {4},
  doi = {10.1145/3658124},
  journal = {ACM Trans. Graph.},
  month = jul,
  articleno = {56},
  numpages = {14}
}

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. This work was supported in part by National Key R&D Program of China (2022ZD0160801) and Shenzhen Collaborative Innovation Program (CJGJZD2021048092601003). We would like to acknowledge Libo Huang from miHoYo Co., Ltd. for help on comparison with the surface-only ferrofluid solver. The Houdini Education license is credited for the video generations.