Unification of the streamline, heatline and massline methods for the visualization of two-dimensional transport phenomena

Functions and lines used for visualization purposes can be unified from physical and numerical viewpoints. The physical unification represents an important step, in order to make common the procedure used to obtain the differential equation from which are obtained the functions whose contour plots (lines) are used for visualization purposes. From the numerical viewpoint, the unification results are also very interesting, making possible the evaluation of the functions' fields by using the same numerical procedures and code routines as for the primitive conserved variables. For domains involving media with very different properties, the harmonic mean practice has been shown to be the most attractive procedure to evaluate the interfacial diffusion coefficient, both for the primitive conserved variables and for the functions introduced for visualization purposes. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.