Closed-form primitives for generating locally volume preserving deformations

In this paper, methods for generating closed-form expressions for locally volume preserving deformations of general volumes in three dimensional space are introduced. These methods have applications to computer aided geometric design, the mechanics of materials, and realistic real-time simulation and animation of physical processes. In mechanics, volume-preserving deformations are intimately related to the conservation of mass. The importance of this fact manifests itself in design, and in the realistic simulation of many physical systems. Whereas volume preservation is generally written as a constraint on equations of motion in continuum mechanics, this paper develops a set of physically meaningful basic deformations which are intrinsically volume preserving. By repeated application of these primitives, an infinite variety of deformations can be written in close form.