Interactive Visualization of Large Finite Element Models

Abstract/Summary

Finite element models used in crash worthiness simulations now contain more than one million mostly quadrilateral elements. Interactive visualization of those models for pre- and postprocessing applications cannot be achieved by brute force rendering of all triangles on even advanced graphics hardware. Well-known mesh simplification algorithms are rarely applied, since the finite element struc- ture needs to be retained, which is usually accomplished by drawing an additional wire frame around each single element.

We propose a new visualization technique which combines the advantages of a specifically adapted mesh reduction algorithm with a texture based rendering of surface details. We start out with a two-stage segmentation based on continuity features of the FE model. The resulting patches form a parameterization domain where lost surface details and element boundaries can be stored in a normal map and in a densely encoded wire frame texture.

The triangulated patches are rendered with a fragment shader performing per-pixel lighting and high quality outline generation for each finite element in a single pass. We achieve a significant speedup in the visualization while re- taining the visual details of the FE model and we expect our method to be applicable to all areas of Computer-Aided Engineering.

(Source: Institute for Visualization and Interactive Systems - University of Stuttgart)

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