Artificial Generation of Road Surface Topography by the Inverse F.F.T. Method

Abstract

Techniques are presented for the digital simulation of the height profiles of a number of correlated parallel tracks and of an entire two-dimensional random road surface. It is shown that the profiles of a number of correlated tracks may be generated by using the one-dimensional discrete Fourier transform, but, in order to generate a fully isotropic surface, it is necessary to use two-dimensional Fourier transform methods and these are discussed in detail. A sample two-dimensional isotropic road surface is generated from an experimentally determined one-dimensional spectral density and its one-dimensional statistics are compared with those of the original displacement data. For the covering abstract of the conference see TRIS 395019. (Author/TRRL)