Three-dimensional visualization of reactive flows in complex geometries

摘要

The visualization of fluid flows has become more challenging, as recent advancements in computational methods have increased the complexity and size of simulations. Our objective is to develop a flexible flow visualization tool for fluid simulations that include the full physics and geometrical complexities found in modeling practical combustion systems, such as internal combustion engines. The challenges to flow visualization come from: (1) the large simulation output, especially when using massively parallel computers; (2) the increasingly complex geometries that include moving surfaces such as pistons and valves; (3) the complex physical phenomena in realistic problems of fuel injection, combustion fronts, boundary flows, and large scale turbulence; and (4) the numerical complexity of indirect addressing of computational elements, variable mesh connectivity, distorted elements, and moving meshes. We have developed a visualization program that addresses these complexities. The program was developed as a post-processor to the KIVA family of codes for reactive flow simulations. Because of the complexity of the KIVA codes, the visualization program is very versatile and applicable to any code with meshes of arbitrary hexahedrons. No comparable commercial visualization package could be found. To visualize the fluid flow, we use mass-less tracer particles that follow the movement of the fluid as determined from output files from the simulation. The movement of the tracer particles is based on a second-order spatial and temporal interpolation of the fluid velocities from successive simulation output files. The visualization program runs on a Silicon Graphics IRIS GTX workstation.