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Title: Identifying Turbulent Structures through Topological Segmentation

Abstract

A new method of extracting vortical structures from a turbulent flow is proposed whereby topological segmentation of an indicator function scalar field is used to identify the regions of influence of the individual vortices. This addresses a long-standing challenge in vector field topological analysis: indicator functions commonly used produce a scalar field based on the local velocity vector field; reconstructing regions of influence for a particular structure requires selecting a threshold to define vortex extent. In practice, the same threshold is rarely meaningful throughout a given flow. By also considering the topology of the indicator field function, the characteristics of vortex strength and extent can be separated and the ambiguity in the choice of the threshold reduced. The proposed approach is able to identify several types of vortices observed in a jet in cross-flow configuration simultaneously where no single threshold value for a selection of common indicator functions appears able to identify all of these vortex types.

Authors:
; ; ; ; ; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
OSTI Identifier:
1247959
Report Number(s):
NREL/JA-2C00-65419
Journal ID: ISSN 1559-3940
DOE Contract Number:  
AC36-08GO28308
Resource Type:
Journal Article
Journal Name:
Communications in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 11; Journal Issue: 1; Related Information: Communications in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science; Journal ID: ISSN 1559-3940
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING; turbulent flows; topology; vortex structures; segmentation

Citation Formats

Bremer, Peer-Timo, Gruber, Andrea, Bennett, Janine C., Gyulassy, Attila, Kolla, Hemanth, Chen, Jacqueline H., and Grout, Ray W. Identifying Turbulent Structures through Topological Segmentation. United States: N. p., 2016. Web. doi:10.2140/camcos.2016.11.37.
Bremer, Peer-Timo, Gruber, Andrea, Bennett, Janine C., Gyulassy, Attila, Kolla, Hemanth, Chen, Jacqueline H., & Grout, Ray W. Identifying Turbulent Structures through Topological Segmentation. United States. https://doi.org/10.2140/camcos.2016.11.37
Bremer, Peer-Timo, Gruber, Andrea, Bennett, Janine C., Gyulassy, Attila, Kolla, Hemanth, Chen, Jacqueline H., and Grout, Ray W. 2016. "Identifying Turbulent Structures through Topological Segmentation". United States. https://doi.org/10.2140/camcos.2016.11.37.
@article{osti_1247959,
title = {Identifying Turbulent Structures through Topological Segmentation},
author = {Bremer, Peer-Timo and Gruber, Andrea and Bennett, Janine C. and Gyulassy, Attila and Kolla, Hemanth and Chen, Jacqueline H. and Grout, Ray W.},
abstractNote = {A new method of extracting vortical structures from a turbulent flow is proposed whereby topological segmentation of an indicator function scalar field is used to identify the regions of influence of the individual vortices. This addresses a long-standing challenge in vector field topological analysis: indicator functions commonly used produce a scalar field based on the local velocity vector field; reconstructing regions of influence for a particular structure requires selecting a threshold to define vortex extent. In practice, the same threshold is rarely meaningful throughout a given flow. By also considering the topology of the indicator field function, the characteristics of vortex strength and extent can be separated and the ambiguity in the choice of the threshold reduced. The proposed approach is able to identify several types of vortices observed in a jet in cross-flow configuration simultaneously where no single threshold value for a selection of common indicator functions appears able to identify all of these vortex types.},
doi = {10.2140/camcos.2016.11.37},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1247959}, journal = {Communications in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science},
issn = {1559-3940},
number = 1,
volume = 11,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2016},
month = {Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2016}
}

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Works referencing / citing this record:

T opo MS : Comprehensive topological exploration for molecular and condensed‐matter systems
journal, March 2018