Visualizing time varying complex CFD flows in Virtual Reality

We discuss immersive visualisation and exploration of large CFD flows of time-varying vector fields in a virtual reality (VR) environment. Processing and visualisation of large CFD datasets can be expensive in terms of computation and rendering time, especially for VR scenarios. In our approach, we have utilised a consumer-grade GPU for interactive visualisation of time-varying three-dimensional vector fields such as velocity. The immersive system is built using Unity3D, which is a virtual reality development software. In our system, flow is visualized as 3D flowlines surrounding the surface of a 3D model that vary over time. The flowlines consist of thousands of particles rendered using GPU. The particles are programmed to orient and follow the direction of the 3D vector field. The flowlines appear in different hues of colours representing their respective scalar magnitudes. With this VR system, students gain an intuitive understanding of the time-varying flow characteristics derived from in house CFD simulations of complex industrial processes such as mixing in stirred vessels.