Visual Analysis of Displacement Processes in Porous Media using Spatio-Temporal Flow Graphs

Alexander Straub, Nikolaos Karadimitriou, Guido Reina, Steffen Frey, Holger Steeb, Thomas Ertl

DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2023.3326931

Room: 103

2023-10-25T23:00:00ZGMT-0600Change your timezone on the schedule page
2023-10-25T23:00:00Z
Exemplar figure, described by caption below
Different abstractions of the displacement process of fluids in a porous material. Time map showing the invading fluid entering the porous domain on the right side and propagating towards the outlet on the left. The periodic color map provides time information directly (violet to yellow), and velocity from its frequency. The extracted graphs are either shown in their physical embedding with time information (displacement graph; white to red), or employing a different layout to show the main channel and highlight the number of outgoing edges (breakthrough graph; categorical color map).
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Keywords

Comparative visualization, ensemble, graph, porous media.

Abstract

We developed a new approach comprised of different visualizations for the comparative spatio-temporal analysis of displacement processes in porous media. We aim to analyze and compare ensemble datasets from experiments to gain insight into the influence of different parameters on fluid flow. To capture the displacement of a defending fluid by an invading fluid, we first condense an input image series to a single time map. From this map, we generate a spatio-temporal flow graph covering the whole process. This graph is further simplified to only reflect topological changes in the movement of the invading fluid. Our interactive tools allow the visual analysis of these processes by visualizing the graph structure and the context of the experimental setup, as well as by providing charts for multiple metrics. We apply our approach to analyze and compare ensemble datasets jointly with domain experts, where we vary either fluid properties or the solid structure of the porous medium. We finally report the generated insights from the domain experts and discuss our contribution’s advantages, generality, and limitations.