Tricolor Technique for Visualization of Spatial Variations of Polydisperse Dust in Gas-Dust Flows

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel RGB-based visualization algorithm for representing the spatial distribution and polydispersity of dust particles in gas-dust flows, including entropy mapping for polydispersity.

Contribution

The work develops an innovative visualization technique that simultaneously displays multiple dust fractions and their polydispersity in a single plot, enhancing analysis of complex gas-dust interactions.

Findings

Effective visualization of up to three dust fractions in one image

Entropy mapping reveals the degree of polydispersity spatially

Demonstrated on turbulent and shock wave gas-dust flow models

Abstract

The aim of this work is to construct an algorithm for visualizing a polydisperse phase of solid particles (dust) in an inhomogeneous flow of a two-phase gas-dust mixture that would allow us to see, within one plot, the degree of polydispersity of the dust phase and the difference in the spatial distributions of individual fractions of dust particles in the computational domain. The developed technique allows us to reproduce concentrations from one to three fractions of dust particles in each cell in the computational domain. Each of the three fractions of dust particles is mapped to one of the main channels of the RGB palette. The intensity of the color shade is set to be proportional to the relative concentration of dust particles in this fraction. The final image for a polydisperse mixture is obtained by adding images in each of the three color channels. To visualize the degree of polydispersity, I propose depicting the spatial distribution of the entropy of the dust mixture. The definition of the entropy of a mixture is generalized to take into account the states of a mixture with zero number of particles in the mixture. They correspond to dust-free sections of the computational domain (voids). The proposed method for visualizing the polydispersity of a mixture of particles is demonstrated using the example of dynamic numerical modeling of the spatial features of dust structures formed in turbulent gas-dust flows and in flows with shock waves.