Tracking Closed Streamlines in Time Dependent Planar Flows

Closed streamlines are a missing part in most visualizations of vector field topology. In this paper, we propose a method which detects closed streamlines in a time-dependent two-dimensional flow and investigates the behavior of these closed streamlines over time. We search in all timesteps for closed streamlines and connect them to each other in temporal order to get a tube shaped visualization. As a starting point for our investigation we look for changes of the type of critical points that lead to the creation or vanishing of closed streamlines (Hopf bifurcation). We follow the resulting limit cycle over time. In addition, changes of the topological skeleton, built by critical points and separatrices, are considered which may start or terminate the life of a closed streamline.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: VMV
• Authors: Thomas Wischgoll, Gerik Scheuermann, Hans Hagen
• Keywords: Closed Streamline, Time-dependent Two-dimensional Flow, Vector Field Topology, VMV 2001, VMV 2008