ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION TOOLS IN CFD .1. A CONFIGURABLE DATA EXTRACTION ENVIRONMENT

The objective is to present new ideas for the implementation of visual ization and analysis environments. This is carried out with a software interface allowing the design and configuration of project-specific e nvironments built around a core library that performs all the data ext raction and manipulation. This includes processing of solutions for re ndering as well as for extraction of flow features for active control on the solution procedure. While the first function is highly interact ive, the second is usually a batch oriented process coupled to the num erical algorithm. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to interpret s olution data in a generic sense. The grid, the primary variables of th e problem, and the derived variables are all considered as a number of simple scalar (discrete) fields defined on the domain. Basic entities in the library then provide building blocks to create images for rend ering purposes or new fields as required in the grid adaption control loop. A data analysis language has been created. Its entities and gram mar are oriented towards the description of both the rendering and the analysis processes. This customized environment is saved in an user c onfiguration file, with an easily understandable syntax, which is load ed at execution time, hence providing the proper configuration for eac h application.