2D flow field visualization based on HSV color model

To show the orientation and magnitude of velocity in flow field, a new 2D flow field visualization method is proposed in this paper by combining the line integral convolution (LIC) algorithm with the HSV color model. With the HSV model, the orientation of velocity is mapped to hue, the magnitude of velocity is mapped to saturation, and the LIC value from LIC algorithm is associated with the value of HSV model. After these processing, a flow field can be visualized as a new color image. This image has not only the same high resolution quality as LIC image, but also shows the orientation and magnitude of flow velocity. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the visualization of 2D explosion flow field. Experiment results show that it can improve the flow visualization effectively.