My thesis work implemented a software animation system capable of generating explosion sequences automatically. Implemented as a discrete time simulation, physical principles are used to drive the explosion process.

Since explosions are very complex, this work relied on the concept of emergence. Small, cube-shaped volumes of air interact with nearby volumes using a simple set of rules. With a large number of these volumes, complex behaviour results.

The main contributions of this work are:
The development of an atmospheric model capable of distributing energy through convection and radiation. The atmosphere model controls the formation and movement of pressure and shock waves.
The development of model that allows interaction between the movement of the gases in the atmosphere and structures in the environment. In other words, the flow of gas is influenced by the location of the objects and the movement of objects is influenced by the flow of gas.
The creation of an "ambient environment" model that handles boundary conditions between what is explicitly modelled in the system and what is beyond.
Incorporation of an adaptive-mesh refinement algorithm that focuses the computation on the more turbulent regions of the environment.

The most interesting results are three short animations that I produced with my software. The first (MPG, 469 KB) shows a fireball consuming cars parked along a city street. The second (MPG, 1809 KB) shows a slow "explosion". Some sort of toxic gas leaks out a vent in the top corner of a room, descends to the ground, and begins to spread along the floor. The final animation (MPG, 824 KB) is a supernovae-like explosion in space.