Plotting a 2d vector on 3d axes in matlab - matlab

Question

I have three vectors x,y,t. For each combination x,y,t there is a (u,v) value associated with it. How to plot this in matlab? Actually I'm trying to plot the solution of 2d hyperbolic equation
vt = A1vx + A2vy where A1 and A2 are 2*2 matrices and v is a 2*1 vector. I was trying scatter3 and quiver3 but being new to matlab I'm not able to represent the solution correctly.
In the below code I have plot at only a particular time-level. How to show the complete solution in just one plot? Any help?
A1 = [5/3 2/3; 1/3 4/3];
A2 = [-1 -2; -1 0];
M = 10;
N = 40;
delta_x = 1/M;
delta_y = delta_x;
delta_t = 1/N;
x_points = 0:delta_x:1;
y_points = 0:delta_y:1;
t_points = 0:delta_t:1;
u = zeros(M+1,M+1,N+1,2);
for i=1:M+1,
for j=1:M+1,
u(i,j,1,1) = (sin(pi*x_points(i)))*sin(2*pi*y_points(j)) ;
u(i,j,1,2) = cos(2*pi*x_points(i));
end
end
for j=1:M+1,
for t=1:N+1,
u(M+1,j,t,1) = sin(2*t);
u(M+1,j,t,2) = cos(2*t);
end
end
for i=1:M+1
for t=1:N+1
u(i,1,t,1) = sin(2*t);
u(i,M+1,t,2) = sin(5*t) ;
end
end
Rx = delta_t/delta_x;
Ry = delta_t/delta_y;
for t=2:N+1
v = zeros(M+1,M+1,2);
for i=2:M,
for j=2:M,
A = [(u(i+1,j,t-1,1) - u(i-1,j,t-1,1)) ; (u(i+1,j,t-1,2) - u(i-1,j,t-1,2))];
B = [(u(i+1,j,t-1,1) -2*u(i,j,t-1,1) +u(i-1,j,t-1,1)) ; (u(i+1,j,t-1,2) -2*u(i,j,t-1,2) +u(i-1,j,t-1,2))];
C = [u(i,j,t-1,1) ; u(i,j,t-1,2)];
v(i,j,:) = C + Rx*A1*A/2 + Rx*Rx*A1*A1*B/2;
end
end
for i=2:M,
for j=2:M,
A = [(v(i,j+1,1) - v(i,j-1,1)) ; (v(i,j+1,2) - v(i,j-1,2)) ];
B = [(v(i,j+1,1) - 2*v(i,j,1) +v(i,j-1,1)) ; (v(i,j+1,2) - 2*v(i,j,2) +v(i,j-1,2))];
C = [v(i,j,1) ; v(i,j,2)];
u(i,j,t,:) = C + Ry*A2*A/2 + Ry*Ry*A2*A2*B/2;
end
end
if j==2
u(i,1,t,2) = u(i,2,t,2);
end
if j==M
u(i,M+1,t,1) = u(i,M,t,1);
end
if i==2
u(1,j,t,:) = u(2,j,t,:) ;
end
end
time_level = 2;
quiver(x_points, y_points, u(:,:,time_level,1), u(:,:,time_level,2))

Answer 1

You can plot it in 3D, but personally I think it would be hard to make sense of.
There's a quiver3 equivalent for your plotting function. z-axis in this case would be time (say, equally spaced), and z components of the vectors would be zero. Unlike 2D version of this function, it does not support passing in coordinate vectors, so you need to create the grid explicitly using meshgrid:
sz = size(u);
[X, Y, Z] = meshgrid(x_points, y_points, 1:sz(3));
quiver3(X, Y, Z, u(:,:,:,1), u(:,:,:,2), zeros(sz(1:3)));
You may also color each timescale differently by plotting them one at a time, but it's still hard to make sense of the results:
figure(); hold('all');
for z = 1:sz(3)
[X, Y, Z] = meshgrid(x_points, y_points, z);
quiver3(X, Y, Z, u(:,:,z,1), u(:,:,z,2), zeros([sz(1:2),1]));
end