Graphic Techniques Used in CFD

Introduction
Can you understand your results by looking at a
table of numbers on a computer screen ?
Computer graphics and computational flow
visualization provide powerful means of
examining results.
For examples
Contour plots can provide
a good means of assessing sharpness of shocks
for checking that there are no incorrect flow gradients next to
farfield boundaries.
Introduction
Techniques
xy Plots
Contour Plots
Vector and streamline Plots
Mesh Plots
Composite Plots
Animations
xy Plots
Some examples of xy plots
xy Plots
Advantages
xy plots are the simplest and most straightforward
category of graphical representation of CFD results.
They are still remain the most precise quantitative
way to present numerical data on a graph.
Another person can readily read quantitative data from
curves on an xy plot without making any mental or arithmetic
interpolation.
Disadvantage
They do not illustrate the global nature of a set CFD
results all in one view.
Contour Plots
What is a contour line ?
It is a line along which some property is constant.
In regions where the dependent variable is slowly changing in space, the
adjacent contour lines are widely spaced.
In regions where the dependent variable is rapidly changing in space, the
adjacent contour lines are closely spaced together
Regions where the contour lines are bunched together indicate regions of
large pressure gradients on the surface where shock waves are present
on the surface of the wing
Contour Plots
Another type of contour plot is flooded contour.
Instead of illustrating flow with a discrete number of contour
lines, the regions between these lines are simply filled with a
color intensity that denotes the value of the flow-field property-
the regions between the lines are flooded with color intensity.
Contour Plots
More examples of flooded contours
Contour Plots
Multizone three-dimensional contour plot
6.25
Contour Plots
In CFD, contour plots are one of the most commonly
found graphical representations of data.
The global nature of the flow is seen in one single view.
Vector and Streamline Plots
A vector plot is a display of a vector quantity at discrete grid points,
showing both magnitude and direction, where the base of each vector
is located at the respective grid point.
Vector and Streamline Plots
Illustrations of streamlines are excellent tools for examining
the nature of a flow.
Vector and Streamline Plots
More examples of streamline plots
Mesh Plots
Mesh plots consist of lines connecting grid points in
either a two- or three-dimensional grid.
Mesh Plots
Composite Plots
Many of the categories of different plots can be combined
into a single plot, called a composite plot.
Composite Plots
Animations