File:3D Turbulence Infinitesimal Fluid Element Stretching Orientation Map.tif

English: This image shows the underlying mechanisms driving most characteristic structures of turbulence. My research aims to find the dominant coherent structures (ie. important, parsable, mechanisms) of stretching alignment fields, which we believe are largely responsible for the unpredictable, rare events of turbulence (ie. airplane turbulence). The stretching alignment field is essentially a map of the directions in which every infinitesimal particle of a fluid is being pulled at a given moment. We can think of the color as corresponding to the angle of this direction vector. This image was made using a MATLAB simulation of a turbulent flow.