Vector Field Topology Visualization Research at NAS

Materials available

History

Topology research at the NAS Research Branch began when Creon Levit developed two interactive programs to interactively investigate critical points (zeros in a vector field) and associated stable and unstable manifolds in 2D and 3D analytic vector fields.

The branch subsequently funded Jim Helman and Bert Hessilink's work in vector field topology visualization resulting in the papers:

The paper A Tool for Visualizing the Topology of Three-Dimensional Vector Fields by A. Globus, C. Levit, and T. Lasinski was presented at Visualization '91 (abstract) (pictures). This paper describes a FAST (Flow Analysis Software Toolkit) module the visualize that visualizes the topology of flows on curvilinear and multizone, iblank grids. This work contributed topology visualization available in a general purpose visualization system, display of the off-surface eigenvector of surface critical points, and location and display of vortex cores.

In 1992 and 1993, D. Asimov, A. Globus, and C. Levit gave vector field topology tutorials at the Vis' conferences. From this work you can examine: