A Poisson random field model for intermittent phenomena with application to laminar-turbulent transition and material microstructure

The alternation of a physical system between two phases or states is referred to as intermittency. Examples of intermittent phenomena abound in applications and include the transition from laminar to turbulent flow over a flight vehicle and the presence of imperfections within material microstructure. It is shown that intermittent phenomena of this type can be modeled by two-state random fields with piecewise constant samples; we refer to the states of the random field as “off” and “on” or, equivalently, 0 and 1. These random fields can be calibrated to the available information, which consists of: (1) the marginal probability that the state of the system is “on”; and (2) the average number of fluctuations between states that occur within a bounded region. The proposed model is defined by a sequence of pulses of prescribed shape and unit magnitude, located at random (Poisson) points within a bounded domain. Properties of the model are discussed, and simple algorithms to generate samples of the random field are provided. Various applications are considered, including voids within material microstructure and the random vibration of a flight vehicle subjected to a transition from laminar to turbulent flow over its surface.