Vortex Detection Through the Visualization Toolkit

Abstract

Automatic vortex detection for turbo-machinery models is a complex problem but is a useful and needed tool for modelers and researchers. We have developed a suite of tools that provide access to several popular methods for vortex detection by implementing the techniques outlined in The "Parallel Vectors " Operator A Vector Field Visualization Primitive[1] by Ronald Peikert and Martin Roth. Our software was developed using the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) to provide these vortex detection capabilities to a wider range of researchers and to several existing visualization software packages, such as ParaView[2]. We added support for both unstructured and structured datasets and can take advantage of high performance computing (HPC) resources by utilizing VTK's multi-threading capabilities.