Large scale random fields generation using localized Karhunen–Loève expansion

Overview & Synopsis

In this paper the generation of random fields when the domain is much larger than the characteristic correlation length is made using an adaptation of the Karhunen-Loève expansion (KLE). The KLE requires the computation of the eigen-functions and the eigen-values of the covariance operator for its modal representation. This step can be very expensive if the domain is much larger than the correlation length. To deal with this issue, the domain is split in sub-domains where this modal decomposition can be comfortably computed. The random coefficients of the KLE are conditioned in order to guarantee the continuity of the field and a proper representation of the covariance function on the whole domain. This technique can also be parallelized and applied for non-stationary random fields. Some numerical studies, with different correlation functions and lengths, are presented.