Description:

This example illustrates some of the flow visualization techniques in the context of the air flow around a race-car.

The first image of the following series shows the pressure distribution on the surface of the car as well as in middle plane. In the rest of the figures, particle traces are used to visualize the complex flow around the car. The ribbons are always tangential to the velocity field, they are colored according to the velocity magnitude and their twist is taken from the vorticity field.

Observations:

• The flow is quite complex behind the car
• Particle traces provide a good way of visualizing this type of flow, however they must be placed at the right places in order to capture interesting flow features. Propagating ribbons from the starting location in both the positive and negative velocity directions proves very useful.