Multi-resolution Unsteady Flow Visualization

In this paper, a visualization method for unsteady incompressible flows is presented. Flow variations are illustrated by animating a sequence of evenly-spaced streamline images. An interpolation scheme based on special Navier-Stoke equations is utilized to interpolate flow fields in the time domain. Thus temporal resolutions are increased and smooth streamline animations are guaranteed. To create the evenly-spaced streamline images, a hierarchy of regular grids is super-imposed upon the domain. The grids are used in seeding and controlling the separating distances between streamlines. The time step size in the streamline integration is adoptively adjusted by using streamline curvatures and speeds such that streamlines will not diverge and fewer samples are computed.