Strategies for the Visualization of Multiple Co-located Vector Fields

Abstract

Fluids research often involves developing theories about the complex relationships between multiple scalar and vector quantities. We discuss strategies for effectively visualizing co-located vector fields, enabling the key physical structures of one vector field to be clearly understood within the context of a related vector field. We describe the range of effects that can be obtained by combining several existing flow visualization techniques for the purposes of analyzing multiple vector fields. Results are shown through two distinctly different scientific applications: the visualization of velocity and vorticity fields in experimentally acquired turbulent boundary layer flow data, and the visualization of velocity and magnetic fields in computational simulations of astrophysical jets.