OdeSolver Tutorial

Truth and initial cylinders Simulation results

Description

In these tutorials, we show the different integration schemes and algorithms available to solve the system of Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) at each step of the simulation. SOFA provides the following integration schemes:

Before going any further, it is important to know that state vectors in SOFA are saved in a component called "State" (see chapter "State" in the documentation). For instance, when mechanical models are being solved, the user needs to add a "MechanicalState" component in the graph. Inside the component, the format of storage for the state vector is a structure called MultiVector. The size and the nature of the degrees of freedom is chosen by setting a "template" in the State component. Let us now go into details about the different ODE solvers in SOFA.



Furthermore, different dynamic solvers have been implement in SOFA. Unlike static solvers, these solvers do take the dynamics of the system into account. However, depending on the aim of the computation, the solver has to be carefully chosen. Let us review the basic differences between explicit and implicit solvers.