We present, extend, and apply a method to extract the contribution of a subregion of a data set to the global flow. To isolate this contribution, we decompose the flow in the subregion into a potential flow that is induced by the original flow on the boundary and a localized flow. The localized flow is obtained by subtracting the potential flow from the original flow. Since the potential flow is free of both divergence and rotation, the localized flow retains the original features and captures the region-specific flow that contains the local contribution of the considered subdomain to the global flow. In the remainder of the paper, we describe an implementation on unstructured grids in both two and three dimensions for steady and unsteady flow fields. We discuss the application of some widely used feature extraction methods on the localized flow and describe applications like reverse-flow detection using the potential flow. Finally, we show that our algorithm is robust and scalable by applying it to various flow data sets and giving performance figures.
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