Flow Diagram

Flow diagram is a collective term for a diagram representing a flow or set of dynamic relationships in a system. The term flow diagram is also used as a synonym for flowchart,[1] and sometimes as a counterpart of the flowchart.[2] Flow diagrams are used to structure and order a complex system, or to reveal the underlying structure of the elements and their interaction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_diagram

• see Sankey diagram, graph-drawing

In graph theory, a flow network (also known as a transportation network) is a directed graph where each edge has a capacity and each edge receives a flow. The amount of flow on an edge cannot exceed the capacity of the edge. Often in operations research, a directed graph is called a network, the vertices are called nodes and the edges are called arcs. A flow must satisfy the restriction that the amount of flow into a node equals the amount of flow out of it, unless it is a source, which has only outgoing flow, or sink, which has only incoming flow. A network can be used to model traffic in a computer network, circulation with demands, fluids in pipes, currents in an electrical circuit, or anything similar in which something travels through a network of nodes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_network

• The simplest and most common problem using flow networks is to find what is called the maximum flow, which provides the largest possible total flow from the source to the sink in a given graph. There are many other problems which can be solved using max flow algorithms, if they are appropriately modeled as flow networks, such as bipartite matching, the assignment problem and the transportation problem. Maximum flow problems can be solved efficiently with the push–relabel algorithm. The max-flow min-cut theorem states that finding a maximal network flow is equivalent to finding a cut of minimum capacity that separates the source and the sink, where a cut is the division of vertices such that the source is in one division and the sink is in another.

cf Solidworks and other flow simulation tools.