Simulation and modeling of turbulent flow involve solving for and analyzing time-dependent and spatially dense tensor quantities, such as turbulent stress tensors. The interactive visual exploration of these tensor quantities can effectively steer the computational modeling of combustion systems. At the same time, visualizing such data poses significant challenges in terms of clutter, occlusion and navigation. We present an interactive framework which combines a detailed 3D inspection view based on volume rendering with glyph-based representations - used as 2D probes -, while leveraging interactive filtering and flow salience cues to clarify the structure of the tensor datasets. The result is a preliminary visual analysis tool to be utilized in debugging, benchmarking, and verification of models and solutions in turbulent combustion. We demonstrate this analysis tool on two example configurations and report feedback from combustion researchers, in particular with respect to the merits of the visualization techniques employed.

Keywords: Tensor Visualization, Application, Strain Tensor, Computational Turbulent Combustion.

PDF

Haque, M. A., Maries, A., Yilmaz, S. L., Nik, M. B., Marai, G. E., Tensor Visualization in Computational Turbulent Combustion: A Case Study, IEEE Visualization 2010, Poster Abstracts with System Demonstration, pp. 1-2, October 1st, 2010.