The VRFurnace: A Virtual Reality Application for Energy System Data Analysis

This paper presents the Virtual Reality Furnace (VRFurnace) application, an interactive 3-D visualization platform for pulverized coal furnace analysis. The VRFurnace is a versatile toolkit where a variety of different CFD data sets related to pulverized coal furnaces can be studied interactively. The toolkit combines standard CFD analysis techniques with tools that more effectively utilize the 3-D capabilities of a virtual environment. Interaction with data is achieved through a dynamic instructional menu system. The application has been designed for use in a projection-based system which allows engineers, management, and operators to see and interact with the data at the same time. Future developments are discussed and will include the ability to combine multiple power plant components into a single application, allow remote collaboration between different virtual environments, and allow users to make changes to a flow field and see the results of these changes as they are made creating a complete virtual power plant