Automated topology classification method for instantaneous velocity fields

Abstract

Topological concepts provide highly comprehensible representations of the main features of a flow with a limited number of elements. This paper presents an automated classification method of instantaneous velocity fields based on the analysis of their critical points distribution and feature flow fields. It uses the fact that topological changes of a velocity field are continuous in time to extract large scale periodic phenomena from insufficiently time-resolved datasets. This method is applied to two test-cases : an analytical flow field and PIV planes acquired downstream a wall-mounted cube.