Introduction to Vector Field Topology

Abstract

Flow visualization is a research discipline that is concerned with the visual exploration and analysis of vector fields. An important class of methods are the topology-based techniques, which concentrate on individual structures in the domain that govern, constrain or guide the behavior of particles in the vector field. In this chapter, we give an overview of existing techniques for steady and unsteady vector fields in 2D and 3D. For time-dependent flows, we describe streamline-oriented and pathline-oriented approaches, eventually leading us to closely related feature-based visualization concepts such as reference frame invariance and Lagrangian coherent structures.