Turbulucid: A Python Package for Post-Processing of Fluid Flow Simulations

Abstract

A Python package for post-processing of plane two-dimensional data from computational fluid dynamics simulations is presented. The package, called turbulucid, provides means for scripted, reproducible analysis of large simulation campaigns and includes routines for both data extraction and visualization. For the former, the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) is used, allowing for post-processing of simulations performed on unstructured meshes. For visualization, several matplotlib-based functions for creating highly customizable, publication-quality plots are provided. To demonstrate turbulucid's functionality it is here applied to post-processing a simulation of a flow over a backward-facing step. The implementation and architecture of the package are also discussed, as well as its reuse potential.

CFD Analysis in the Mesh Modified Gas Diffusion Layer of a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC)

“…The integration of visualization software in CFDs has allowed an increase in their popularity due to the ease of generating graphs of the simulation results [6]. Also, post-processing requires a significant amount of time to exploit the data generated by the solution [7,38].…”