Extraction and visualization of swirl and tumble motion from engine simulation data

An optimal combustion process within an engine block is central to the performance of many motorized vehicles. Associated with this process are two important patterns of flow: swirl and tumble motion, which optimize the mixing of fluid within each of an engine's cylinders. The simulation data associated with in-cylinder tumble motion within a gas engine, given on an unstructured, timevarying and adaptive resolution CFD grid, demands robust visualization methods that apply to unsteady flow. Good visualizations are necessary to analyze the simulation data of these in-cylinder flows. We present a range of methods including integral, feature-based, and image-based schemes with the goal of extracting and visualizing these two important patterns of motion. We place a strong emphasis on automatic and semi-automatic methods, including topological analysis, that require little or no user input. We make effective use of animation to visualize the time-dependent simulation data. We also describe the challenges and implementation measures necessary in order to apply the presented methods to time-varying, volumetric grids.