A Reynolds Number Based Sampling Technique for 3-D Vector Fields in Computational Fluid Dynamic Environments

Effective visualization of unsteady, time-dependent vector fields in a virtual environment is not a trivial task. This is due to the fact that most visualization techniques require the user to have a prior understanding of how the vector field will behave to set the parameters used to create the visualization. In this thesis we will take air flow data from a computational fluid dynamic simulations to calculate the amount of turbulence (represented as Reynolds numbers) to identify regions of interest. We then calculate wind pathlines that will intersect with these points sampled from these regions. We address the issue of optimizing the appropriate number of pathlines relative to the size and resolution of the simulation. We are then able to implement the ability to interact with the simulations using a modern video game engine with virtual reality capabilities. By comparing the results with results that do not involve the turbulence based sampling methods, we conclude that our method provides more detail where detail is demanded