Visualization of the pre-and post-processing in finite element analysis based on GiD

Abstract

In the field of computational geophysics, simple but easy approaches for pre- and post-processing of complex geology models are still lack. This brings big difficulty for dealing with practical complicated problems. Through an example of 3D finite element numerical simulation for the DC method, the procedures of finite element pre-and post-processing in geophysics based on the universal 3D modeling software named GiD are studied. By writing the codes of “Problem Type”, the initial model which can be used in the existing finite element calculation software was built and outputted. After calculation, by using GiDpost library, the files used for post-processing in GiD can be outputted easily. Finally, the pre-processing, calculation and post-processing procedures were successfully integrated in a visualized user interface in GiD. Comparing with other methods used for pre and post-processing in geophysics, the method described in this paper is move simple, efficient and effective. Moreover, it is universal and adaptive for all types of finite element method numerical simulation programs used in geophysics.