Extraction and Visualization of Flow Features

This paper presents tools which allow an advanced investigation of spatial and temporal progress of segmented vortex structures in flow fields with the consideration of vortex dynamics. The work is based on the local and Eulerian detection and segmentation of vortex structures and the visualization of these structures with recent visualization methods, e.g. the application of LIC-textures on the surfaces of 3d structures. The second step is the tracking of vortex structures based on the time-dependent integration of vortex core lines. In the third step, according to the vortex dynamics, the individual degree of impact is determined by computation of induced velocities via the Biot-Savart equation for each vortex. The induced velocities are used to determine the induced kinetic energy and enstrophy, which allows the evaluation of a global value of influence for each vortex structure, that can be tracked in time.