Asynchronous Contact Mechanics

The principled, faithful simulation of complex collisions for deformable objects, such as cloth and other flexible materials, remains an open, challenging, and important problem. We propose to place safety and correctness on an equal footing with progress. To overcome the fundamental opposition between these requirements, we turn to asynchronous integration, which integrates each geometric element of a discrete shape (e.g., the stretching resistance of cloth defined across a triangle) at its own pace, not in lockstep with the entire object.