What exactly are ForceField?

[Olumide]

Hi –

Total beginner here.

I’ve read both the sofa documentation and paper

twice

and I still don’t understand what exactly force fields are. My intuition was that force fields describe the force acting at any given point. However all three nodes in the following example contain two force fields

 <MeshSpringForceField name="FEM-Bend" template="Vec3d" stiffness="100" damping="1" />
<TetrahedronFEMForceField name="FEM" template="Vec3d" method="polar" poissonRatio="0.3" youngModulus="1116" assembling="0" />

How am I to think about force fields?

Regards,

– Olumide

*Update*
The scene does NOT work with one of the force fields. But I still can’t explain the contribution of each force field.

[Hugo]

Dear @olumide

Me again!
Forcefields define any internal or external force applied to a mechanical system (if we talk about continuum mechanics). More generally, it could be defined as the function defining the evolutions of your system.

One single body, several forces can be acting in the same time:
– external pressure (surface forces)
– external volumetric forces (e.g. gravity)
– internal forces (mechanical constitutive law)

You were therefore right about ForceField.
Best,

Hugo

[Author]

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