Abstract: Abaqus? is one of the most popular commercial finite element analysis(FEA) software, but the visualization function of post-processing module—Abaqus/CAE is relatively weak. Especially, it handles mass data with difficulties, such as the extremely slow refreshing, limited functionalities and unexpected crash of software. Therefore, this paper proposes a solution: develop a Python script—ODB2VTK+ to convert Abaqus output (ODB file) into VTK file format, then visualize the output by menas of ParaView. ODB2VTK+ provides space-based partition algorithm which can achieve good partition and minimizes data redundancy to reorganize the mass data into small pieces suitable for parallel visualization. The parallel programming on it achieves higher efficiency, and the configuration file is provided to facilitate parameter setting. Testing ODB2VTK+ on the mechanical FEA output of 3D rock models from microtomography which have complex pore structure with fine grids shows the conversion is completely correct. Then it is visualized perfectly with ParaView’s capability of parallel visualization and its functionalities of volume rendering, tensor glyph, etc. The immersive virtual reality(VR) with HMD is applied, it encompasses the user with computer generated 3D environment that allow user to walk through the internal pore structure for observing and analyzing directly the result of FEA. The proposed solution overcomes the limit of Abaqus/CAE in post-processing and shows that VR will be a popular tool in FEA post-processing. In addition, due to its good readability and extensibility, ODB2VTK+ can be easily modified to process more different problems in Abaqus. ODB2VTK+ is shared on GitHub (https://github.com/ Liu-Qingbin/ODB2VTKplus) for the convenience of Abaqus users.

Key words: Abaqus?, ParaView, finite elements, post-processing, parallel programming, parallel visualization, virtual reality