APPLICATIONS OF VIRTUAL REALITY IN GEOMECHANICS

Gernot Beer1 and Gernot Opriessnig2

INTRODUCTION

The concept of virtual reality is a very powerful tool for enhancing the human perception of complex three-
dimensional information. The field of geomechanics is predestined for such an application since we are not only
dealing with complex 3-D information about excavation geometries and geological features but also may be
interested in displaying results of numerical simulations which may by themselves contain 3-D information (i.e.
stress tensors, flow patterns etc.). Applications can be found in tunneling, mining and reservoir engineering. The
use of such system is:

Enhanced perception of geological features in the vicinity of excavations either in mining or tunneling
Enhanced perception of results of numerical simulations
Planning of rescue scenarios in the case of an emergency (tunnel fires, mine accidents)
Virtual tour for clients of tunnels at the planning stage.

VIRTUAL REALITY AND DISPLAY TECHNIQUES

The technique of virtual reality enables realistic three-dimensional perception of data which exist in computer
memory only. This is achieved in the following ways:

1. The user sits in front of a workstation and wears special shutter glasses which alternatively shut off each eye.
At the instant the left eye lens is shut on the screen the view of the left eye is displayed and vice versa. This
occurs at such a high frequency that a three-dimensional image is formed in the brain. The navigation is
done with a three-dimensional input device called a space ball.
2. The user wears a data helmet with a monitor in front of each eye. Head movements are transmitted to the
software by a tracking system, movements through the data are achieved with a hand held device.
3. The user is situated in a virtual environment called CAVE which has up to six walls onto which computer
generated stereo images are projected. With the use of shutter glasses a three-dimensional perception is
possible. The perception is more intense than in method 1 and has the advantage that more than one person
can be situated in the CAVE. These virtual environments are very expensive since they require very high
graphics performance. Very few installations exist in the world, the one that we are using is at Chalmers
University in Sweden.

Figure 1: CrystalEyes (left) Headmounted Display (middle) and CAVE (right)

1
Professor and coordinator, SITU research initiative, University of Technology Graz, Austria
2
Leader, Visualization project, SITU research initiative.
TUNNEL VISUALISATION SYSTEM

In this paper a visualization system is described which is currently being developed within an Austrian joint
research initiative on Numerical Simulation in Tunneling. The visualization system is currently available on a
workstation with stereo option and has undergone preliminary tests in the CAVE environment at Chalmers
University. An implementation on a PC running Windows NT using head mounted display is underway. TVS is
currently being applied to the display of geological structures and the display of results of numerical simulations.
Several examples of such applications will be presented including animated rock mass displacements, the
display of stress concentrations as fog and may more. Within a European project we are investigating the use of
the system for training rescue personnel in the case of an emergency (fire, accidents) in a tunnel and to test
rescue scenarios.

THE TVS USER-INTERFACE

TVS allows the user to perform a virtual walk through a tunnel which exists in computer memory only.
During the virtual walk through the model the user may observe different results of numerical simulations and
geological features. With the use of electronic shutter-glasses the model becomes 3D. Tunnelling engineers
usually are not very familiar with the use of complicated computer-software, and they should not be required to
study huge user-manuals, to be able to walk through the virtual tunnel The tunnel can be displayed with photo-
realistic textures. This textures are derived from pictures taken by a stereoscopic camera.
Another way to display geological structures and groundwater-level, is, to paint surfaces in colours. The user
is able to select, which part of the model should be visible, an in which way it should be displayed. Making the
model translucent gives good results, if it is necessary, to see more layers of the model. During the virtual walk-
through the position and the viewing-direction are displayed in the horizontal and vertical section of the model.
Figure 2 shows the graphical user-interface of TVS.

Figure2: Graphical User Interface of TVS

To make the navigation easy a SpaceBall is used. Moving the ball of this treedimensional input device will
change the position, turning it changes the viewing-direction. A simple, linear transformation SpaceBall
movement to viewer movement is not very efficient. The user should be able to determine his position very
precisely, and, without moving his hand from the SpaceBall, move very fast. For this purpose a progressive
scaling is used. To improve the user-friendliness of the navigation, the user can decide, that only the dominant
two directions of SpaceBall movement will be processed. It is also possible, to choose these directions
manually(Noble 1998). To make the virtual model spatial, electronic shutterglasses are used.

IMPROVING THE DISPLAY-QUALITY

The 3D model is drawn as Boundary or Finite elements. These elements usually are part of a mesh, which is
used for numerical simulation. If the calculation is done with finite-elements, the three-dimensional space is
filled with brick-elements. These elements are necessary for the calculation, but their geometry does not need to
be drawn. Simulation results inside these elements are important for visualisation. They are drawn as fog. Only
visible surfaces need to be displayed. If the tunnel-advance is visualised, elements become invisible, so this
calculation must be redone for every loadcase. To improve the smoothness of displaying elements with a
midside node, additional points on the element edges are calculated. This calculation is done, using the Newton-
Interpolation algorithm. Usually elements are defined by their borders. To render surfaces, the midside node of
the element has to be known. This position of this point can be calculated with the help of shape-functions(Beer
1992). OpenGL has options to use different kinds of lighting effects. The characteristic of a light-source can be
modified in a very large range. Position, direction, opening-angle, colour, attenuation-factors or the loss of
intensity depending on the distance to the source may be varied. These adjustments are only effective if the
normal-vector of the model-surface is known. If the model is drawn as a couple of triangles, this is no problem,
because this vector can be found for each triangle. Using the mesh from numerical simulation, the quadrilateral
elements usually consist of four or eight points. Such elements do not have a plane surface, so a normal-vector
cannot be calculated exactly. Making triangles out of each non-triangular element will increase the necessary
rendering effort. The Tunnelling Visualization Software defines the normal-vector as perpendicular to both
diagonals. This is not exact, but sufficient for good lighting effects.

SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE TUNNELLING VISUALISATION SYSTEM

In many cases it may be necessary to display results on 2D-cuts through the model. This is possible with
TVS. The user can move a cutting-plane with the Spaceball and bring it in any position. The plane is displayed
in vertical and horizontal section (Figure 3).

Figure 3: 2D-cut of a 3D-model

 Tunnels usually are very long compared with their other dimensions. To display such models in a effective
way it is possible to distort the geometry by defining the scaling-factor for each coordinate. While the tunnel is
built, many physical and geometrical properties change. e.g. the amount of stress in the rock changes, new zones
of damage are created, the level of groundwater moves and therefore the geometry of the tunnel is also a
function of the time. The Tunnelling Visualisation Software can display this as animation. The geometrical
change usually is very small, compared to the size of the tunnel, so the changes can be amplified with a user
defined factor. The user is able to control many properties of the animation, like speed and direction.
In a 3D model of the tunnel many properties are a function of three dimensions and should be pictured in a
way, that takes account of these special three-dimensional properties. The method implemented in TVS is to
display the data as fog(Opriessnig 1998) with variable density depending on the value of the scalar being
displayed. This method gives good results. During the virtual walk through the model a high stress-value
becomes visible as a dense cloud. The structures behind the fogged zone are still visible. Figure 4 shows the
amount of stress in the rock pillar between two tunnels, displayed as fog.

Figure 4: Display of stress in the rock pillar

The user can define different scaling-curves(Opriessnig 1998)(Gu et. al. 1998), e.g. to highlight maximum /
minimum values. With this method it is also possible to draw fuzzy geological features also known as shear
bands. These are described as points clustered around a surface. The three-dimensional visualisation of spatially
distributed values as fog makes great demands on the hardware used. If all pixels of the cloud have to be
projected into the view level, a lot of calculation effort is necessary. The density values have to be integrated
along all lines to the viewing point. In most cases, other objects will be visible and the calculation must take this
into account. The projection has to be redone after each change of position or viewing direction. This would
take too long for visualisation in real-time. If a fog scene is created as a cluster of points, the graphics system
will be stretched to the limit. With a special procedure it is possible to create the fog in real-time.
The method is based on the following idea: Three-dimensional space is divided into planes, where the values
are known. In these planes, the scalar values are represented by the density. If the planes are drawn at right
angles to the viewing-direction and the borders are extrapolated to zero, the cloud appears to be three-
dimensional.
It is shown experimentally, that instead of at 90, planes may be viewed at an angle between 45 to 135.
This means that it is enough to place the planes perpendicular to one of the three coordinate-directions.
The values are known on fixed raster-points, so no calculation is necessary to define the planes. The addition
of the density values is done by the graphics hardware. The depth-buffer ensures that only visible parts of the
cloud are drawn. If the measured or calculated values are not regular it is necessary to interpolate. A good
method to do this is to find a weighted average-value in each grid-point.
 To find the raster-values, a lot of calculation work is necessary, but this work has to be done only once. The
only work, that has to be done during run-time is, to find the position of the planes and the best order to draw
them.
For satisfactory results it is very important, to find the right number of raster-values. If more values than
necessary are calculated, they have to be stored and drawn. Graphics performance is very expensive, so the
number of values should be as small as possible. But if the number is too small, information will be lost.
In the field of communication engineering, such problems are very frequent (for example if analogue signals
are digitalized).
Simulation results have special properties, which have to be considered by the visualization tool. In some
cases the values are not smooth, and discontinuous at element boundaries. This is caused by the discretisation
procedure. Sometimes very localised zones of high stress are calculated, which are not of interest for the purpose
of the interpretation of the results by the tunnel engineer. The Tunnelling Visualization System offers the
possibility to cut off localised peaks. The user can define a maximum and a minimum value, progression and
amplification factor of a scaling curve. So the scaling of contours can be modified for example. to highlight
peaks or troughs. To add direction information arrows are drawn.
The results of a finite element simulation usually are computed inside an element and not on the edges, where
they would be necessary for drawing. Only displacements are calculated at these points. Stress values for
example are calculated in the Gauss integration points inside an element. The geometry of an element is
described by shape functions(Beer 1992). With the help of these functions, it is possible to find the values of the
stress at the edge points by extrapolation. If one point belongs to more than one element, the extrapolated values
for this node should be the same for each element. If there is a large difference, this indicates, that the mesh is
too coarse, and the results in error and the size or the type of the elements need to be changed. With a special
global interpolation procedure it is possible to smooth differences between elements (Figure 5) (Opriessnig
1999). This is the same algorithm as used for displaying three dimensional scalar fields as fog(Opriessnig 1998).

Figure 5: Two steps of global smoothing

(left: unsmoothed, middle: smoothed with sharp contours, right: smoothed with blure contours)

DEVELOPER TOOLS

The graphical user interface (GUI) was developed using the SiliconGraphicsGUI-builder RapidApp This
software helps to create the user interface and produces a C++ code. The resulting code can be modified, to be
included into program parts, that cannot be created by RapidApp. A disadvantage of RapidApp is the primary
justification to create programs, using the OpenInventor format. To be flexible the Tunnelling Visualization
Software is written using SiliconGraphicss OpenGL libraries. OpenGL-widgets are supported by RapidApp, but
not all, necessary settings can be done, using the GUI-builder. For example it is impossible, to enable the usage
of the depth-buffer. This setting makes it possible, to ignore invisible parts of the model without doing additional
calculation-work.
For some TVS-features stereo-mode does not make sense (e.g. 2D-cuts). Therefore the change between
stereo and normal mode can be made. RapidApp does not support stereo-mode for OpenGL-based applications.
Therefore it was necessary to write separate code for generating the two pictures for each eye. The control of the
CrystalEyes-Emitter was realised, using SiliconGraphicss stereo libraries. In this mode 120 frames per second
are rendered.
Runtime-optimisation is done, using the SiliconGraphics-Workshop-tools. This tool makes it possible, to
change the source-code, while the program is running. The software analyses how long each line or subroutine
of the program takes. So it is easy to find out, in which part of the software runtime can be saved.

HARDWARE

Rendering very large models with photorealistic textures in stereo and realtime requires a high graphics
performance. TVS is developed on a Silicon Graphics Octane MXI Workstation. This platform supports Stereo-
glasses and the use of the SpaceBall. This platform includes texture-memory for hardware-texturing, which is
very important for displaying a model with photorealistic textures in real time. The two graphic-pipes of the
MXI-board are another advantage of the used hardware. With the help of this feature the possible frame-rate is
doubled. While one picture is drawn by one pipe, the next one can be prepared in the second one. In the future
the Tunnelling Visualisation Software will be ported on a PC, to use it on the tunnel-site.

CONCLUSIONS

Tunnelling is a very new field for virtual reality. With the help of TVS the tunnelling engineer on the tunnel-
site is able to observe different physical phenomena or geological features in the tunnel or inside the rock-mass.
The values displayed may originate from numerical simulation or from measurements.
Numerical simulation is done while the tunnel is being built. For these calculations it is necessary, to create a
mesh, which is then available for the visualization. Making stereoscopic pictures of the tunnel face, which is
needed to identify geological structures, brings the possibility, to give the model a realistic appearance, by using
these photos as texture.With the Tunnelling Visualization System it would be possible to provide the client and
other interested parties with a guided tour of tunnels in planning and may be used to alleviate concerns by
environmentalists.
Another application of TVS is the planning of rescue operations after tunnel or mine collapses. This allows
rescue personnel to plan rescue scenarios and to train rescue procedures in the event of a tunnel fire. Since the
real simulation of the effects of a fire in a real tunnel is rather expensive and cumbersome and in many cases not
possible it is convenient to perform a virtual simulation. In such a simulation relevant data about the tunnel and
the fire are stored in computer memory. Using visualisation techniques based on the concept of virtual reality
these data can then be displayed in such a way that the user has the impression of actually being in a real tunnel
observing a real fire. This software tool can then be used to test different rescue scenarios the only expense of
this exercise being computer time.

AKNOWLEDGEMENT

The work reported here was supported by the Austrian Science Found (Project Nr.: FWF-S08001-TEC)

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