particlebased

Particlebased is a term used in computational physics, computer graphics, and related fields to describe approaches that represent materials and phenomena with discrete particles rather than continuous fields, meshes, or grid-based representations. Particles carry individual properties such as mass, position, velocity, and sometimes internal state variables, and their collective behavior approximates the macroscopic system.

In particlebased methods, interactions are modeled through local rules, kernel functions, or contact models, and time evolution proceeds via numerical integration. This mesh-free paradigm accommodates large deformations, fragmentation, and free surfaces more naturally than traditional grid-based methods, and it scales well with parallel hardware.

Notable particlebased methods include Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) for fluids, Particle-in-Cell (PIC) and fluid-implicit-particle (FLIP) hybrids, and the Material Point Method (MPM) for solids and granular media. In computer graphics, particle systems are used to simulate fire, smoke, dust, and debris. Related approaches for granular and solid materials include discrete element methods (DEM), which emphasize inter-particle contacts more explicitly.

Applications span animation, engineering simulations, astrophysics, and materials science. Advantages include mesh-free flexibility, straightforward handling of complex geometries and fracture, and amenable parallelization. Limitations involve numerical noise, higher computational cost at fine resolutions, and the need for careful calibration of interaction rules and boundary conditions to maintain stability and realism.

See also: particle system, SPH, PIC, FLIP, MPM, DEM, meshfree methods.