Materials science for game programming

Question

Does anybody know of a good resource for programming the behaviors of various materials interacting?

Game programming physics resources usually cover collision detection, momentum, intertia, etc., but they seem to deal with a sort of idealized "material". I'm interested in simulating behavior of, say a projectile striking metal, which would deform more plastically, vs. one striking wood, which would tend to splinter, or glass, which would shatter.

Is there a book or online resource that deals with this from a game/simulation perspective?

Answer 1

I believe this gamedev.net article on material deformation has a lot of what you're looking for.

Answer 2

If you're interested in things like simulating projectiles striking metal, plastic deformation, fracturing glass, etc. I don't think games will offer you much that's based on rigorous physics.

Those kinds of calculations are usually done using finite element analysis packages like ANSYS, NASTRAN,ABAQUS etc. If you're a material scientist, and you want more than an empirical answer, I would say that gaming engines wouldn't have the fidelity that you're looking for.

I loaded the material deformation article that chaos posted. I'm firmly in the FEA camp.

LS Dyna is another contender that you should check out. It's used for highly non-linear impact problems as well.