Development and testing of a user-friendly Matlab interface for the JHU turbulence database system*

One of the challenges that faces researchers today is the ability to store large scale data sets in a way that promotes easy access to the data and sharing among the research community. A public turbulence database cluster has been constructed in which 27 terabytes of a direct numerical simulation of isotropic turbulence is stored (Li et al., 2008, JoT). The public database provides researchers the ability to retrieve subsets of the spatiotemporal data remotely from a client machine anywhere over the internet. In addition to C and Fortran client interfaces, we now present a new Matlab interface based on Matlab's intrinsic SOAP functions. The Matlab interface provides the benefit of a high-level programming language with a plethora of intrinsic functions and toolboxes. In this talk, we will discuss several aspects of the Matlab interface including its development, optimization, usage, and application to the isotropic turbulence data. We will demonstrate several examples (visualizations, statistical analysis, etc) which illustrate the tool.