Real-Time Simulation of Hydraulic Erosion Based on Soil and Water Conservation Theory and Physical Calculation

Abstract

Hydraulic erosion stands as one of the most critical influencing factors in geological transformation processes. However, current hydraulic erosion simulations still face several challenges. First, existing computer-based simulations prioritize visual realism while inadequately accounting for authentic physical phenomena and complex environmental factors during hydraulic erosion processes, resulting in insufficient accuracy of simulation outcomes. Secondly, hydraulic erosion involves fluid-solid coupling calculations. Physical-particles-based fluid simulation methods, such as the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and position based fluids (PBF) methods, have relatively low computational efficiency in this interaction process.

This paper addresses these two challenges. Regarding accuracy, we comprehensively integrate theoretical frameworks and research achievements from soil and water conservation studies, achieving for the first time a complete hydraulic erosion simulation process encompassing splash erosion and lateral erosion. The simulation system also incorporates multiple environmental factors to enhance accuracy. For efficiency improvement, we introduced an efficient fluid-solid interaction method based on volume maps. This innovation enhances computational efficiency in fluid particle-terrain interactions, making our system one of the first to achieve real-time hydraulic erosion simulation using the PBF particle method.

The proposed method successfully simulates various hydraulic erosion phenomena including splash erosion, vertical incision erosion, lateral erosion, sedimentation and other related phenomena. It achieves real-time computational efficiency in medium-scale scenarios.