June 2009

Video: Visualization of lifted turbulent jet flames in a heated coflow

Gas combustion creates a complex turbulent flow, here when a pre-heated jet of hydrogen and air pass through a slot. The computer simulation of turbulent hydrogen flames in this visualization required 3.5 million CPU hours running for 15 days on 10,000 processors. Scientific visualization allowed for dissection of the simulated flame, including the side-by-side comparison of vorticity and dissipation, the behavior of turbulent eddies and even specific layers of a turbulent flame.

Visualizations and sound by K.-L Ma, J. Chen, H. Yu, C. Wang, C.-K. Chen and C.S. Woo of the University of California, Davis.