FlowVisual: Design and evaluation of a visualization tool for teaching 2D flow field concepts

Abstract

Visible as well as invisible fluids exist everywhere in nature and many scientific fields. Most fluids (air, water, etc.) are transparent, thus their flow patterns are invisible to us. Flow visualization is used to make the flow patterns visible so that desired insights can be gleaned. There exist various software tools to perform different flow visualization tasks. However, there is a lack of tools to help students learn important flow visualization concepts. In this paper, we present a visualization tool, FlowVisual, which illustrates basic flow field concepts in 2D. Techniques involving field-line tracing, line drawing, background texture, field-line comparison, and critical point detection are integrated into FlowVisual to serve a comprehensive learning goal targeting both engineering and visualization students. We evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness of FlowVisual by conducting a formal user study consisting of an introduction and training section, an auto-grading test, and a survey. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.