Topology of Feature Dynamics in Advected Scalar Fields

Scalar features in fluid flow are traditionally visualized with glyphs or using direct 3D representation, and their topology changes over time are often conveyed with abstract graphs. Using these techniques, however, the spatio-temporal evolution of features undergoing topological changes is difficult to analyze. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for the visualization of the dynamics of feature topology that represents the separation of a feature spatiotemporally with respect to its volumetric contributions. To this end, we employ particle-based feature tracking to find volumetric correspondences between features at two different time steps. From this, within the initial feature, we extract boundaries around volume sections corresponding to the target features at the other time step. For the application of our approach in two-phase (liquid-gas) flows, we additionally present a feature-based corrector method to ensure phase-consistent particle trajectories. The utility of our technique is demonstrated by application to scalar physical quantities of single-phase flows, and two-phase flows where the scalar field represents the fraction of the liquid phase.