George H. Goedecke Paul M. Pellegrino
Dept. of Phys., NMSU, Las Cruces, NM 88003-0001
Harry J. Auvermann
Army Res. Lab., Battlefield Environment Directorate, WSMR, NM 88002-5501
A structural model of isotropic homogeneous atmospheric turbulence is presented, in which the turbulence is described as an ensemble of individual localized quasistatic eddies or turbules. Turbules of different sizes a are assumed self-similar with respect to their temperature and flow velocity fields, and randomly positioned and oriented with no correlations. It is shown that, in order to obtain agreement with the Kolmogorov acoustical scattering spectrum, the usual relation between turbule flow speed v and size, v(proportional to)a[sup 1/3], must be assumed, and, in addition, (i) turbule number densities must be proportional to a[sup -3], and (ii) turbule sizes must be in a geometric sequence, from the outer scale to the inner. It is also shown that the Kolmogorov spectrum is insensitive to the turbule morphology, and that the extent of the ``inertial range'' is influenced only weakly by the morphology. Expressions for C[sub T][sup 2] and C[sub v][sup 2], and for the boundaries of the inertial range, are derived in terms of the structural parameters.