Stereoscopic Flow Visualization


Stereoscopic flow visualization is being used to investigate the structure and evolution of a low Reynolds number turbulent boundary layer. The boundary layer has a Reynolds number based on momentum thickness of 700. The research is being carried out by Carl Delo, under the direction of Professor A.J. Smits. You will need anaglyph glasses (the kind with red and blue lenses) to see the 3-D effect. The images are in JPEG format. If your web browser cannot load the images, the presence of an application such as JPEGView on your system is necessary. For best results, you should turn on image auto-loading, and adjust your viewing window so that the 600 pixel wide scale below is centered.


Stereoscopic visualizations of one volume (time step) of the turbulent boundary layer:

Top view of the volume with dimensions (102K JPEG image)
Top view of the volume (94K JPEG image)
Close-up top and bottom views of a large coherent turbulent boundary layer structure (128K JPEG image)
Four different perspective views of the coherent structure (136K JPEG image)
Looking upstream at the coherent structure (111K JPEG image)
A split view of the structure with a z-normal slice (111K JPEG image)


Stereoscopic visualizations of one volume (time step) of a direct numerical simulation of a turbulent boundary layer seeded with a passive scalar:

Perspective view of the full computational domain (26K JPEG image)
Top view of the full computational domain (17K JPEG image)
Close-up top view, rendered at the same scale as the experimental data (26K JPEG image)
Close-up perspective view, rendered at the same scale as the experimental data (34K JPEG image)


Also of interest:

Some stereograms of other flows that have been investigated

The method used to acquire the volumetric data set visualized

How the stereograms were generated and Stereoscopy in general

The Gas Dynamics Lab Water Channel Facility