Integrazione di Tecnologie CAE in Ambienti VR

Applying virtual reality (VR) to numerical analyses (finite element –FE or fluid dynamics - CFD) produces considerable advantages, both for costs and for quality, in the mechanical engineering design process. Generally, during the stage of structural tests, after having carried out the CAD model, the designer runs FE and/or CFD analyses. Clearly, hardly ever, the obtained results are satisfactory during the first iteration, so that the designer, after having analysed the first data, needs to modify some parts of the model and to carry out a new analysis. Such re-analysis process is very improved and faster if it is carried out in a virtual reality environment; that because using the virtual reality technique the designers can use, in a natural way, head and hand motions to view the results and to modify the design. In this paper a tool, that allows engineers to carry out interactive stress re-analysis in a virtual reality environment, was developed. Thanks to this system, the designer, operating directly on the tridimensional model in VR, can modify the parts on which some changes are necessary, and see, after having made the above-mentioned modifications, the new finite element analysis results.