Physically based modeling and rendering of avalanches

Avalanche is a natural disaster in the snow-covered mountainous area in winter, which may cause great disasters to human life and property. It is also a danger for skiers and climbers. This paper presents a new physically based algorithm to simulate the dynamic avalanches under position-based dynamics framework. To realistically simulate avalanches’ dynamic characteristics, we introduce the Bingham plastic model from geodynamics to model snow flow motion in avalanches. The interaction between snow flow in the avalanche and the surrounding objects is simulated by a level set-based two-way fluid–solid coupling model. We also propose static and kinetic friction mixed model to determine the accumulated transition of the avalanche. To create an avalanche scene with more realistic details, we employ an aerodynamics-based snow drag force model to generate snow fog effect. Finally, by choosing different criterion shear rate and friction parameters, different kinds of wet and dry avalanche scenes are realistically rendered. Compared with the real photographs of avalanches, our simulated results are quite satisfactory.