Abstract text

In the system for detecting collision between rigid or deformable polyhedral objects simulated numerically and represented by simplicial complexes (K₁, K₂), there is effected in a pre-processor module (110) at least one step (111) of calculating a geometrical description of the polyhedral cone corresponding to the normals in the strong sense (n_|K| (Int σ)) associated with the faces (σ) of the simplicial complexes, and at least one step (113) of constructing trees of encompassing volumes. From information obtained from the pre-processing step, the modules (121, 122) calculate local minimum distances (LMD) and quasi local minimum distances (quasi-LMD). The system for implementing the method can be coupled to a mechanical solver (130) and to one or more peripherals (140).