Interactive Exploration of Dissipation Element Geometry

Dissipation elements (DE) define a geometrical structure for the analysis of small-scale turbulence. Existing analyses based on DEs focus on a statistical treatment of large populations of DEs. In this paper, we propose a method for the interactive visualization of the geometrical shape of DE populations. We follow a two-step approach: in a pre-processing step, we approximate individual DEs by tube-like, implicit shapes with elliptical cross sections of varying radii; we then render these approximations by direct ray-casting thereby avoiding the need for costly generation of detailed, explicit geometry for rasterization. Our results demonstrate that the approximation gives a reasonable representation of DE geometries and the rendering performance is suitable for interactive use.