Date of Award

4-25-2005

Document Type

Thesis open access

Department

Computer Science

Abstract

Collision detection is an issue in physical simulations; without it simulations are inaccurate. Unfortunately, effective collision detection can require a significant amount of computational power. To reduce the number of computations and make the problem more tractable, computer scientists have used date structures to partition the system. This removes the need to have every single partical check for possible collisions with every other particle in the system; however, generic data structures typically do not work as well as specialized data structures, so this has led to the creation of multiple spatial data structures. Some spatial data structures and algorithms were customized and created to optimize memory usage while others have been made to increase speed. This project seeks to compare spatial data structures in systems with uniformly and non-uniformly distributed particles, while varying the number of particles and the filling factor. The results of this project should provide useful information to those doing general collisional simulations, such as physicists and engineers.

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