Advanced visualization for finite elements analysis in virtual reality environments

A new visualization method for an illustrative visualization of physical parameters in immersive workspaces is presented. Through the newly developed visualization pipeline, FEM results such as stress, temperature and resulting deformation, as well as the underlying constraints can be visualized in virtual and augmented reality applications. Special features are the use of 3D glyphs for mapping stress direction and gradient as well as data preparation and the resulting data format, which was especially developed for use with VR systems. This article demonstrates the current state of VR developments, which were done at the Virtual Reality Center Production Engineering of the Institute for Machine Tools and Production Processes, for improving the analysis of complex FE datasets, and gives an outlook to future research activities.