Visual Simulation System Development Of The Open-Type Hard Rock Tunnel Boring Machine Based On Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality is a new technology that produced by the combination of computer and electronic. It simulated the realistic and the artificial immersive virtual environment by integrated applying the technology such as sensors, artificial intelligence and stereo display. Virtual reality technology is a kind of Multi-Sensory virtual environment perception, in addition to the common visual perception; it also includes other aspects of perception such as hearing, touch and smell. With the aid of visual display device and human-computer interaction equipment, it can make the users perceive and operate the objects in the virtual scene to get a kind of immersive feel. Due to its powerful ability of man-machine interaction, Virtual reality has been widely used in design and industrial manufacturing, military, medical rehabilitation, archaeological, education and so on. As the continuous development of computer technology, virtual reality shows more and more development prospects Because of the characteristics of "low cost, high performance". Stereo display device as an important part of virtual reality system is the foundation of the interactive operation in virtual simulation.Full face rock tunnel boring machine is a highly mechanized and automatic machine that applied to tunnel construction, which is the integration of hydraulic pressure, machinery、 electro、electric and control. Because of the advantage such as highly automatic、economic and not affected by the outside influence. It is the most widely used and most perspective mec hanical equipment in tunnel boring field. In this paper, we study the open type hard rock tunnel boring machine, which is suitable for hard rock strata excavation. The rock breaking mechanism is that rock groove depth deepening and fracture occurs under the comprehensive function of cutter head and hob, and finally peeled off from the rock surface. Over the next few decades, our country need different diameter, different types of tunnel boring machine to accomplish lots of projects such as urban subway project, road traffic, tunnels through rivers. The demand of machine will sustained growth in the future for a period of time, therefore it is very necessary to strengthen theoretical research and product development of TBM. Tunnel boring machine’s special construction environment makes it difficult to study, therefore, it is a very good study way to simulate the construction scene by using virtual reality technology, and it also has the very good engineering applicability for other large engineering machinery and equipment.The main content of this paper is the visual simulation system development of the open-type hard rock tunnel boring machine based on virtual reality. The object of this research is the 803E open-type hard rock tunnel boring machine which produced by German Wirth Company. The frame building of the open-type hard rock tunnel construction scene is based on Multigen-Creator. Meanwhile, this paper made a deeper research on the technique of material, texture mapping, bulletin board, LOD technique and Instantiation technique. With the using of the techniques mentioned above, this paper created vivid construction scene and fully meet the demand of Virtual visual simulation. Adopting the top-down assembly design approach, this paper constructed TBM model in the Pro/E software, regulated every assembly part according to movement relationship, got data format which can be processed in virtual reality programs through transforming, and then completed the model assembly of tunnel boring machine in virtual reality environment. In this research, we set up DOF node for the moving parts of tunnel boring machine, optimized the data model of tunnel boring machine and produced OpenFlight data format. Based on LynX interface of Vega software, we finished the configuration of the tunnel boring machine and the virtual scene, and got the application definition file. Using Microsoft VC++6.0 as compilation environment, we developed the Vega application based on MFC framework, which has realized the machine complex construction process simulation, and have good interactivity as well. We finally got the construction stereo display of the tunnel boring machine through passive stereo projection system.