Swarm robotics and complex behaviour of continuum material
This is an incremental study that addresses material simulation for researchers in computational mechanics or robotics.
The paper tackles the problem of simulating deformable continuum materials using a rule-based approach inspired by swarm robotics, and it tests the model's limits by applying it to more complex scenarios like shear tests and fracture mechanisms.
In swarm robotics, just as for an animal swarm in Nature, one of the aims is to reach and maintain a desired configuration. One of the possibilities for the team, to reach this aim, is to see what its neighbours are doing. This approach generates a rules system governing the movement of the single robot just by reference to neighbour's motion. The same approach is used in position based dynamics to simulate behaviour of complex continuum materials under deformation. Therefore, in some previous works, we have considered a two-dimensional lattice of particles and calculated its time evolution by using a rules system derived from our experience in swarm robotics. The new position of a particle, like the element of a swarm, is determined by the spatial position of the other particles. No dynamic is considered, but it can be thought as being hidden in the behaviour rules. This method has given good results in some simple situations reproducing the behaviour of deformable bodies under imposed strain. In this paper we try to stress our model to highlight its limits and how they can be improved. Some other, more complex, examples are computed and discussed. Shear test, different lattice, different fracture mechanism and ASTM shape sample behaviour have been investigated by the software tool we have developed.