Dynamic Three-Dimensional Visualization of Fluid Construction Materials

The presented work extends the state-of-the-art of visualizing discrete-event construction simulations in three dimensions (3D). Efficient methods are presented along with a tool, \IParticleWorks\N that can be used to animate simulated construction processes that involve unstructured, fluid construction materials as resources or byproducts. Common construction processes that involve such fluid materials include placing concrete, dumping dirt, shotcreting, sandblasting, dewatering, water distribution, and inserting slurry. The writers capitalize on a classical computer graphics concept called particle systems to design simple, simulation model-authorable, parametric-text methods that can describe arbitrary volumes of dynamic fluid construction materials in animated 3D virtual construction worlds. These methods can be used to instrument discrete-event simulation models (or other external authoring interfaces) to automatically generate dynamic visualizations of any modeled construction operations that commonly handle and process fluid construction materials.