ALICE - Quantitative Flow Field Visualisation

The ESPRIT project ALICE focuses on the development of a Quantitative Flow
Field Visualization (QFView) system. QFView is a graphically distributed
software environment that integrates EFD and CFD data processing (e.g. flow
field mappings with flow field visualization). The QFView system supports a
unified treatment of data while :
-validating results produced from experimental and numerical systems, and
- archiving and retrieving data from the unified flow field database.
The fluid dynamics data generated with Experimental Fluid Dynamics (EFD)
and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations require fast and easy
access in order to be of interest in industrial environments. The aim is to
combine results from different simulations (PIV, CFD, LDV...) : (i) to
improve the physical understanding of the flow phenomena, (ii) to validate
and improve CFD codes, (iii) to use EFD techniques efficiently and (iv) to
provide user friendly access to all this information.
To prove the versatility of such approach several experiments are chosen
from various application fields. Their requirements steered the design of
the QFView system (final output of the EP-28168 ALICE project).
At VUB, a facility for Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is constructed
using the continuous-wave 4W Argon Ion Laser.The pulses necessary for PIV
are generated with a Bragg cell, which is driven by a generator. The TTL
signal coming from a synchronizer triggers the RF generator. The laser
sheet is produce by cylindrical lens from the frame-straddled pulses. The
digital camera captures the images of the illuminated particles.A spatial
Cross Correlation Algorithm quantifies the instantaneous velocity field
from the acquired images. A specially designed mini-water tunnel is
constructed to investigate the complex flow field of a double annular jet.
Recently purchased 30mJ Nd-YAG pulse laser (allows air velocity measurement
up to 45m/s), will be integrated in our PIV system.

The distributed nature of QFView allows the user to extract, visualize and
compare data from the database over the Word Wide Web, Emphasis is given to
the treatment of non-stationary and transient data, which requires
animation and time dependent visualization tools. The visualization of the
velocity field, the mean velocity and turbulence quantities from, PIV, LDV
and CFD are demonstrated. the QFView architecture is characterised by
three important requirements: to be open, web-based and componentised.It is
modularized in order to improve flexibility and integration of (current and
future) visualization components. In addition to standard set of
visualization components representing scalar and vector fields, a special
weight is given to comparison and extraction procedures, which ease and
improve interactive manipulation of large data sets (search, browsing...).
the central point is the database where large amounts of data sets are
imported, classified and stored for further reuse.

We believe that WWW represents the future of distributed, collaborative
scientific environments. Thus, QFView is based on web-oriented client-
server technology (e.g. Java, JDBC). It is envisaged that QFView will
reduce the global costs and time required: to process, to validate and
classify results addressing fluid mechanics problems.