Stream Surfaces and Texture Advection: A Hybrid Metaphor for Visualization of CFD Simulation Results
Robert S. Laramee · 2006
Stream surfaces are a well known flow visualization technique from visual computing used to portray the characteristics of vector fields. And texture advection research has made rapid advances in recent years. A stream surface is analogous to placing a massless, frictionless sheet in a flow field. Texture advection is analogous to placing a source of smoke in a vector field. We present a hybrid visualization of texture advection on stream surfaces. This approach conveys properties of the vector field that stream surfaces alone cannot. We apply the visualization technique to various patterns of flow from CFD data important to automotive engine simulation including two patterns of in-cylinder flow (swirl and tumble motion) as well as flow through a cooling jacket. In addition, we explore multiple vector fields defined at the stream surface such as velocity, vorticity, and pressure gradient. The results of our investigation highlight both the strengths and limitations of the hybrid stream surface-texture advection visualization technique and offer new insight to engineers exploring and analyzing their simulations. 1