Damping
It is possible to make dynamic relaxation more computationally efficient (reducing the number of iterations) by using damping. There are two methods of damping:
- Viscous damping, which assumes that connection between the nodes has a viscous force component.
- Kinetic energy damping, where the coordinates at peak kinetic energy are calculated (the equilibrium position), then updates the geometry to this position and resets the velocity to zero.
The advantage of viscous damping is that it represents the reality of a cable with viscous properties. Moreover it is easy to realize because the speed is already computed. The kinetic energy damping is an artificial damping which is not a real effect, but offers a drastic reduction in the number of iterations required to find a solution. However, there is a computational penalty in that the kinetic energy and peak location must be calculated, after which the geometry has to be updated to this position.
Read more about this topic: Dynamic Relaxation