Visualization of Advection‐Diffusion in Unsteady Fluid Flow

Abstract

Abstract Advection has been the standard transport mechanism in flow visualization. Diffusion, in contrast, has not been considered important in visual flow field analysis so far, although it is inherent to many physical processes. We present a novel technique that allows for interactive 3D visualization of both advection and diffusion in unsteady fluid flow. We extend texture‐based flow visualization, which is advection‐oriented, by diffusion. Our finite volume approach based on WENO (weighted essentially non‐oscillatory) reconstruction is well parallelizable and features low numerical diffusion at interactive rates. Our scheme contributes to three different applications: (a) high‐quality dye advection at low numerical diffusion, (b) physically‐based dye advection accounting for diffusivity of virtual media, and (c) visualization of advection‐diffusion fluxes in physical media where the velocity field is accompanied by a concentration field. Interactive rendering of the virtual dye is accomplished by ray casting. We apply our GPU implementation to CFD examples of thermal convection and evaporation phenomena.