Charges
The term “charge” is commonly used in electronics to refer to the property of an object that determines its electromagnetic interactions. However, in a broader context, this term can be adapted to represent different physical quantities depending on the specific domain of application.
The OpenPLX Physics concept of a Charge is an entity which gives an Interaction an attribute to compute interaction forces. The charge is commonly defined as an attribute in a Body definition. E.g. a ContactGeometry or a local frame of reference, in OpenPLX called MateConnector. Mate interactions like hinge joints, ball joints, prismatic joints etc. are two-body interactions, which require two MateConnectors in the charges array attribute to be complete and valid.
ContactGeometry
A concept valid for both 2D and 3D physics, also 1D physics where the only type is a line geometry of variable length and position. A ContactGeometry owns one Material attribute, which define the internal material properties of the geometry.
Material
Material defines properties of a homogenous isotropic material. Note that for defining the interaction at contact between two contact geometries a SurfaceContact.Model has to be declared given two materials.
The materials defined with OpenPLX Physics are const
, meaning that once they are defined, their internal properties are not possible to update from elsewhere.
property | description | unit |
---|---|---|
density | Mass per length unit to the power of the physics dimension | 1D - [kg / m], 2D - [kg / m^2], 3D - [kg / m^3] |
youngs_modulus | Compressive stiffness | [N / m^2] |
These properties are clearly not enough to define a real material that can flex or break. Expect future types, such as ElastoPlasticMaterial or ViscousMaterial.
To learn how to use materials, see