| Project Title/ID Number | Advanced Visualization for Seismic Performance—4182002 |
| Start/End Dates | 10/1/02—9/30/03 |
| Project Leader | Mike Bailey (SDSC/Industrial Collaborator) |
| Team Members |
| Project goals and objectives |
The objective of this project is to develop an advanced visualization toolkit for structural and geotechnical simulations. Visualization is necessary to investigate the response and performance of systems through simulation. The large models and varied ways of examining performance require new visual metaphors and methods of user interaction. |
| Role of this project in supporting PEER’s vision |
| Methodology employed |
The methodology for this project involves several aspects. Using
the OpenSees API, data will be transferred from an OpenSees simulation
to the visualization toolkit. With the large models and response
history analyses, the data sets will be on the order of 100's of
gigabytes, based on the PEER testbed project simulations. Future
simulations could produce 1 terabytes. We will investigate data compression
methods for large datasets. The second aspect is to develop advanced rendering methods that are efficient for large models. The third aspect is to examine visual metaphors for continuum models of soil and frame members for structures. We will be able to animate meshes for both, provide user control over slices and sections, and use a variety of texture and transparency methods for showing response for scalar and vector quantities. The fourth aspect is to develop stereographic visualization methods. This has the potential for dramatically improving the visual ability to discern trends in space in time of simulations. Stereographic display adds a tremendous amount of realism to the visualizations of models. All visualization software will be developed in open-source OpenGL, which supported by all graphics processors. We will utilize the VTK toolkit and customize it for the OpenSees visualization application. We will also utilize SDSC's Volume Explorer software, which allows transformations, zooming, and highlighting of large datasets. The final applications will be standalone because current browser technology does not support the resolution and dataset size necessary for visualizing simulations. |
| Brief description of past year’s accomplishments and more detail on expected Year 6 accomplishments |
The project has just started in March 2003, but based on earlier work with the PEER group and our experience in visualization, we plan to have the first prototype available for use in summer 2003. The remainder of the year long project will be to iterate on the development cycle as we experiment with the PEER testbed project simulations. |
| Other similar work being conducted within and outside PEER and how this project differs |
| Plans for Year 7 if this project is expected to be continued |
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| Describe any instances where you are aware that your results have been used in industry |
| Expected milestones |
| Deliverables |