Towards interactive finite element analysis of shell structures in virtual reality

A first step towards a semi-immersive virtual reality (VR) interface for finite element analysis (FEA) is presented in this paper. During recent years, user interfaces of FEA solvers have matured from character-based command-line driven implementations into easy-to-use graphical user interfaces (GUIs). This new generation of GUIs provides access to intuitive and productive tools for the management and analysis of structural problems. Many pre- and post-processors have been implemented targeting the simplification of the man-machine interface in order to increase the ease of use and provide better visual analysis of FEA solver results. Nevertheless, none of these packages provides a real 3D-enabled interface. The main objective of this project is to join state-of-the-art visualization technology, VR devices, and FEA solvers into the integrated development environment VRFEA