Intuitive understanding of turbulent flows through 3D visualization*

Turbulent flows are typically characterized by a wide range of space and time scales, and they are difficult to understand for undergraduate and junior postgraduate students. We introduce our visualization system built to help students intuitively understand complex turbulent flows through three-dimensional animation. The visualization system mainly consists of a surface projector, a curved surface screen, and 3d glasses. The animations of the turbulent flows are produced using the software VisIT, which is a tool for visualization and animation. We will show some typical turbulent flows, such as isotropic turbulent flows, turbulent channel flows, turbulent flows over periodic hills, and turbulent flows over wind farms. The visualization system produces impressive animations and shows the details of the three-dimensional flow structures, thus significantly helping students intuitively understand the complex flow phenomena.