Simulating Realistic-Looking Sediment Ripple Fields

Sandy sediment ripples impact sonar performance in coastal waters through Bragg scattering. Observations from data suggest that sandy ripple elevation relative to the mean seafloor as a function of the horizontal coordinates is not Gaussian distributed; specifically, peak amplitude fading over space associated with a random Gaussian process is largely absent. Such a non-Gaussian nature has implications for modeling acoustic scattering from, and penetration into, sediments. An algorithm is developed to generate ripple fields with a given power spectrum; these fields have non-Gaussian statistics and are visually consistent with data. Higher order statistics of these ripple fields and their implications to sonar detection are discussed.