DisMech

DiSMech (Discrete Simulation for Mechanics of Slender Structures) is an open-source simulation software being developed at the Structures-Computer Interaction Lab at UCLA in collaboration with Boston University and Carnegie Melon University, to simulate complex soft structures that can be modeled as flexible rods, plates, or shells, or a combination thereof. Based on discrete-differential geometry, It uses the popular discrete elastic rods theory to simulate rods and two different discrete elastic shell models to simulate thin plates and shells.

The codebase is designed to be user-friendly and modular and can easily be used to simulate different kinds of soft structures for a wide variety of applications, such as deformable material manipulation using robots, soft robot control, or understanding biological phenomena involving flexible body deformation. We have already made the first version of the software, coded in C++, capable of handling networks of rods with soft or rigid contact, available. The MATLAB and Python versions of the simulator with additional functionality are still in the works and we hope to release them soon. We aim to develop DiSMech to the extent that it becomes a one-stop solution for accurate and efficient simulations of soft bodies for our research community.