Structural Analysis in Virtual Reality for Education with BMLY
Embargo until
Date
2022-10-17
Authors
Zhang, Lanyi
Moen, Cristopher D.
Blum, Hannah B.
Marks, Benjy
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Cold-Formed Steel Research Consortium (CFSRC) Colloquium
Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) is an engaging and immersive medium for interacting with a digital environment. The educational benefits of implementing virtual reality into learning modules has recently been explored. This work presents a process for creating a virtual reality learning module on beam bending and a preliminary study on its effectiveness. In this work, virtual reality and structural analysis are combined to create an interactive virtual experiment on a steel beam. A VR user can select the location of a gravity load along the member and increase its magnitude while following the deformation and stresses in real time. The VR environment is implemented using the open source three.js library. The results of a survey to assess student interaction and evaluation of the developed learning module is presented.