The generation of surface targets with specified surface statistics

Abstract The analysis of scatter from rough surfaces has been of interest to researchers for many years. The comparison between theory and measurement has not always produced results that instill confidence in either the theory or the measurements. One would like to be able to construct the required surfaces to have control of the target as well as the measurements. There has been some work in the past to construct target surfaces, however, the statistics of the surface could only be determined after the fact. This paper presents some results of work to generate physical surfaces from known (i.e. desired) surface statistical properties. This study extends previous work on the generation of random surfaces for use in computer simulation approaches. The known statistical surface is extended using a bicubic spline technique and these results are interfaced to a numerically-controlled machine to generate the physical surface. A portion of a complete surface with Gaussian statistics was constructed and tested ...