Abstract:
Existing methods for analyzing separation of streamlines are often restricted
to a finite time or a local area. In our paper we introduce a new method that
complements them by allowing an infinite-time-evaluation of steady planar
vector fields. Our algorithm unifies combinatorial and probabilistic methods
and introduces the concept of separation in time-discrete Markov-Chains. We
compute particle distributions instead of the streamlines of single
particles. We encode the flow into a map and then into a transition matrix
for each time direction. Finally, we compare the results of our
grid-independent algorithm to the popular Finite-Time-Lyapunov-Exponents and
discuss the discrepancies.