Post-treatment¶

Visualizing fields¶

When defining a loading, the user can choose the fields to be output (see Loading and outputs: pure mechanical loading). This leads to the creation of VTK files, with the vtk simple legacy format (http://www.vtk.org/VTK/img/file-formats.pdf), containing the pieces of information requested. These files can then be visualized and post-treated with ParaView (http://www.paraview.org/) or similar visualization tools.

Here is an example of what can be obtained using ParaView.

Visualizing the deformed shape¶

Only in the case of finite strains (i.e. when the small perturbations assumption is not used, see Algorithm parameters), it is possible to visualize the fields on the deformed geometry. This can be done using the program deformedShape which can be found in the folder post/deformed_shape and is compiled when the script install is executed. This program can be executed through the command

./deformedShape root_in [root_out]


The first parameter is the root of the input file(s) and the second optional parameter gives the possibility to define the root of the output file. By default, this root is named sortie. This program will look for the file root_in_def.vtk or, if it does not exist, the files root_in_defi.vtk (i = 1, ..., 9) in order to retrieve the gradient of the displacement. This information allows the computation of the displacement field leading to the coordinates of each voxel in the deformed configuration. The gradient of the displacement is then rewritten using this frame in the file root_out.vtk. Moreover, if the files root_in_sig or root_in_pi (respectively standing for the Cauchy and Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensors) exist, the corresponding variables will also be written in the root_out.vtk file.

Here is an example of what can be obtained using ParaView.

Plotting results¶

The standard output files (std, mstd and zstd, see Loading and outputs: pure mechanical loading) can directly be used by data plotters (gnuplot, Matlab, etc.). A precise description of the format is given in the header of each file.

Here are three examples of gnuplot commands leading to different plots.

The figure in the case 1 is obtained with the following command in gnuplot:

plot "file.std" u 8:2 w l notitle lw 3


As it is explained in the header of the file, the eighth column corresponds to the strain in the xx direction and the second column corresponds to the stress in the same direction.

The figure in the case 2 is obtained with the following command in gnuplot:

plot "file.mstd" every 2::0 u 8:2 w l notitle lw 3, "file.mstd" every 2::1 u 8:2 w l notitle lw 3


Here, we use the option every 2::0 and every 2::1 because there are two materials and we plot the results for the first (number 0) and the second (number 1) material.

The figure in the case 3 is obtained with the following command in gnuplot:

plot for [j=1:1110]  "file_i.zstd" every 1110::j-1 u 1:14 w l notitle lw 3


In this case, there are 1110 zones in the material i and we plot the values obtained in each zone. The first column corresponds to the time and the fourteenth column corresponds to the standard deviation of the stress in the xx direction.

Be careful the use of for loop in gnuplot requires the 4.6 version or later.

In order to obtain an SVG image, the following commands must be executed in gnuplot before using the command plot::

set t svg;
set o "plot.svg";


The label on the axis and the title of the plot can also be assigned using the commands:

set title "plot name";
set xlabel "x name";
set ylabel "y name";