Survey and analysis of multiresolution methods for turbulence data

Abstract This paper compares the effectiveness of various multi-resolution geometric representation methods, such as B-spline, Daubechies, Coiflet and Dual-tree wavelets, curvelets and surfacelets, to capture the structure of fully developed turbulence using a truncated set of coefficients. The turbulence dataset is obtained from a Direct Numerical Simulation of buoyancy driven turbulence on a 512 3 mesh size, with an Atwood number, A = 0.05 , and turbulent Reynolds number, R e t = 1800 , and the methods are tested against quantities pertaining to both velocities and active scalar (density) fields and their derivatives, spectra, and the properties of constant density surfaces. The comparisons between the algorithms are given in terms of performance, accuracy, and compression properties. The results should provide useful information for multi-resolution analysis of turbulence, coherent feature extraction, compression for large datasets handling, as well as simulations algorithms based on multi-resolution methods. The final section provides recommendations for best decomposition algorithms based on several metrics related to computational efficiency and preservation of turbulence properties using a reduced set of coefficients.