VR tools for the development of energy-efficient products

This paper describes Virtual Reality (VR) tools for the development of energy-efficient products in mechanical engineering. Visualizing the energy flows of a machine tool offers a better understanding of their efficiency for the designer and the engineer during the virtual product development process. The first part of this paper presents the transformation of 2D Sankey diagrams into 3D and their advantages over other 3D visualizations. The main focus here lies in the visualization of discrete energy values.The second part introduces an adaptive Finite Element algorithm for faster calculation that allows the interactive handling of energy-efficient problems in virtual environments. The basic approach proposes the combination of this algorithm with the usage in a virtual environment through the implementation of a programming interface.