title: Good way to handle collisions between mass-spring systems
body: <p>I am programming a C++ simulation application in which several mass-spring structures will move and collide and I'm currently struggling with the collision detection and response part. These structures might or might not be closed (it might be a "ball" or just a chain of masses and springs) so it is (I think) impossible to use a "classic" approach where we test for 2 overlapping shapes.</p>
  
  <p>Furthermore, the collisions are a really important part of that simulation and I need them to be as accurate as possible, both in terms of detection and response (real time is not a constraint here). I want to be able to know the forces applied to each Nodes (the masses), as far as possible.</p>
  
  <p>At the moment I am detecting collisions between Nodes and springs at each time step, and the detection seems to work. I can compute the time of collision between one node and a spring, and thus find the exact position of the collision. However, I am not sure if this is the right approach for this problem and after lots of researches I can't quite find a way to make things work properly, mainly on the response aspect of the collisions.</p>
  
  <p>Thus I would really like to hear from any technique, algorithm or library that seems well suited for this kind of collisions problems or any idea you might have to make this work. Really, any kind of help will be greatly appreciated.</p>