Unified Visual Post Processing of Mesh and Meshless Data for Hydrodynamic Simulations
Yun Jang, John Biddiscombe, Jean‐Christophe Marongiu, Étienne Parkinson, Tech Hydro · 2009
CFD researchers have a wide variety of interactive post-processing too ls at their disposal for visualization and quantitative analysis, but these tools are generally designed to operate onlyon mesh based data. Recent developments in CFD have led to a growing field of particle based methods, in partic ular, Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), for which no such tools exist. To address this problem we present a framework for consistent visual and interactive analysis of both particle and mesh based data within a u nified architecture. The goal of the framework is to enable quantitative visualization and analysis of either data type in an identical manner so that the user can use a single approach to post-processing. This unification m akes the process of comparison between results from conventional CFD and experimental SPH directly possible, by making use of custom probes and filters which behave the same in either environment. The meshless nature of SPH data within a CFD environment also makes identification of distinct boundary surfaces more difficult as mode ls generated for SPH simulations are not as well structured as those for conventional CFD, due to the lack of comme rcial support for these models. We therefore introduce the concept of probe projections onto surfaces to allo w the selective positioning of regions of interest on boundaries for the purpose of integration of parameters and visualization of results.