Streamline-based visualization of 3D explosion fields

The visualization of explosion fields is an important issue in explosion science and technology. This paper presents a streamline-based method to visualize 3D explosion fields. Given the velocity data in a 3D explosion field, isosurfaces of the magnitude of velocity are firstly extracted. Seeds of streamlines are then uniformly distributed on the isosurfaces. And streamlines are generated with the placed seeds. By this way, the density of streamlines is controlled by a predefined value. When the isosurfaces and the density value are properly set, the coverage of streamlines can be sufficient. To reduce visual cluttering, a technique of line illumination is used to render streamlines. Moreover, a color coding technique is applied to visualize the magnitude of velocity and distinguish the distribution of media in 3D explosion fields. Test results show that the method proposed in this paper can achieve effective visualization of 3D explosion fields. The visual clarity and the spatial perception are improved in the final visualized images.