Abstract

An algorithm for identifying the center of swirling flow in 3-D discretized vector fields has been developed. The algorithm is based on critical point theory and has been implemented as a visualization tool within pV3, a package for visualizing 3-D transient data. The scheme works with gridding supported by pV3: structured meshes as well as unstructured grids composed of tetrahedra, polytetrahedral strips, hexahedra, pyramids, and/or prism cells. The results have been validated using artificially-generated vector fields and 3-D CFD data. Introduction This work is motivated by the need to easily locate vortices in large 3-D transient problems. A tool that will automatically identify such structures is definitely needed to avoid the time-consuming and tedious task of manually examining the data. However, the question of what defines a vortex raises considerable confusion. As a result, various definitions have been proposed by investigators, including, among others, Moin and Kim [1] [2]...

Citations