A visualization system for mineral elasticity

The authors have developed an efficient visualization system to gain insight into large collections of mineral elasticity data produced by an increasing number of both theoretical calculations and experiments. The system allows us to visualize multivariate elastic moduli (i.e., elastic constant tensors) and their variation with composition, pressure and temperature. Moreover, it supports visualization of elastic wave propagation in an anisotropic medium by rendering the wave velocity data, which are calculated as a function of propagation direction in a three-dimensional space. This paper describes the design, implementation and application of the visualization scheme we have developed for mineral elasticity. In particular, our scheme exploits a combination of parallel coordinates, star plot, scatter plot and polygon-surface rendering techniques, which are implemented using OpenGL, GLUI and C++. The result is a highly portable and flexible interactive visualization system. For illustration, the elastic properties of several important oxide and silicate minerals are successfully visualized as a function of pressure and temperature.