Integrated Multi-aspect Visualization of 3D Fluid Flows

Abstract

The motion of a fluid is affected by several intertwined flow aspects. Analyzing one aspect at a time can only yield partial information about the flow behavior. More details can be revealed by studying their interactions. Our approach enables the investigation of these interactions by simultaneously visualizing meaningful flow aspects, such as swirling motion and shear strain. We adopt the notions of relevance and coherency. Relevance identifies locations where a certain flow aspect is deemed particularly important. The related piece of information is visualized by a specific visual entity, placed at the corresponding location. Coherency instead represents the homogeneity of a flow property in a local neighborhood. It is exploited in order to avoid visual redundancy and to reduce occlusion and cluttering. We have applied our approach to three CFD datasets, obtaining meaningful insights.