Abstract:
Integral flow surfaces constitute a widely used flow visualization tool due
to their capability to convey important flow information such as fluid
transport, mixing, and domain segmentation. Current flow surface rendering
techniques limit their expressiveness, however, by focusing virtually
exclusively on displacement visualization, visually neglecting the more
complex notion of deformation such as shearing and stretching that is central
to the field of continuum mechanics. To incorporate this information into the
flow surface visualization and analysis process, we derive a metric tensor
field that encodes local surface deformations as induced by the velocity
gradient of the underlying flow field. We demonstrate how properties of the
resulting metric tensor field are capable of enhancing present surface
visualization and generation methods and develop novel surface querying,
sampling, and visualization techniques. The provided results show how this
step towards unifying classic flow visualization and more advanced concepts
from continuum mechanics enables more detailed and improved flow analysis.