Development Of GUI For Static Finite Element Software Based On Qt And VTK

With the further development of industrialization,CAE software is more and more applied to various fields.The traditional fields such as machinery,construction and water conservancy that relate to the national economy.The core fields such as aerospace,military defense and explosive blasting that have the strategic position.The emerging fields such as biochemistry and astronomy that have the larger application foreground.The paper is based on the graphical user interface framework Qt and visualization toolkit VTK,with the goal of developing a static finite element software pre-processing and post-processing system.The usage of Qt and VTK and the integration of preprocessing and post-processing system are studied systematically.The details are as follows:Firstly,the paper systematically and intensively studies the overall characteristics and organizational structure of Qt and VTK.It detailedly introduces the signals and slots communication mechanism of Qt,functional modules commonly used in Qt,and the data structures,visualization modules and common visualization algorithms in VTK.And it analyzed the advantages of using Qt and VTK for pre-processing and postprocessing software system development.In this pre-processing and post-processing software system,Qt is mainly used for the development of the software interface and the integration of various functional controls.VTK is mainly responsible for the view function area in the interface and the pre-processing and post-processing display of the finite element model.Secondly,in accordance with the technical route of software development,the paper expounds the development process of the pre-processing and post-processing software system from the design goals,system architecture and functions.In addition,it also gives the implementation methods and program codes of some main functions and key technologies in the system.The components such as coordinate system,sacalar bar and text annotation that lie in the view.The file type such as step,stl,inp and vtk that store model information.The interaction style such as pan,rotate,zoom,picker that manipulate the view.The post-processing such as cloud map,cutter map,clip map,contour map and deformation map that display the result of caculation.Finally,the paper introduces the process of demonstration using cantilever beam examples and car body-in-white examples after the completion and development of this pre-processing and post-processing software system.And it shows the functions and usages of this software system.The demonstration process of the cantilever beam example verified that the software has a complete finite element analysis process and the operation method of each functional module.The demonstration process of the body-in-white example shows that the software has an interface for data exchange with mainstream software such as Abaqus,and can accurately process the model data generated by it.