Numerical and parametrical analysis of higher order material models

Realistic cloth animation is a difficult problem in computer science. Various as hoc methods are frequently used for cloth animation, however a human eye can easily catch the faults of such approaches. This is because such methods do not use the physical and mechanical properties of cloth. However, using proper mechanical cloth models is very computationally intense, so simpler models are being searched for. Some realistic cloth modeling can be done using thin plate models with a vanishing (near zero) bending stiffness. However, a bending stiffness of zero will not suffice, due to the instabilities of numerical solvers. This work uses the Kirchhoff plate equation to experiment with the bending stiffness parameter. It describes the theoretical concepts an implementation of the solver used for the experiments. This solver employs the finite element method to find the displacements of the thin plates with near vanishing bending stiffness under various types of load and support --Abstract, page iii