Methods for Interactive Visualization of Large Flow Data Sets

Modern computational fluid dynamics simulations are capable of the detailed simulation of fluid flow. The output data sets of these simulations are very large and information rich. The importance of data visualization is clearly recognized for the presentation of these data sets. For gaining new insight in the nature of flow, interactive visualization methods are essential. The goal of our work is to develop a environment which allows fluid dynamics experts to analyze very large flow fields. This paper motivates the need for an interactive visualization environment. The design of the environment is centered around two fundamental beliefs: First, the environment should integrate modeling and visualization. Second, interactive visualization is essential so that exploration is stimulated. We discuss two interactive visualization methods and their application to a flow field resulting from a direct numerical simulation. We believe that the working methods discussed in this paper will be typical of future visualization environments.