ABSTRACT
The relative importance of suspended particles and turbulence as backscattering mechanisms within a hydrothermal plume located on the Endeavour Segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge is determined by comparing acoustic backscatter measured by the Cabled Observatory Vent Imaging Sonar (COVIS) with model calculations based on in situ samples of particles suspended within the plume. Analysis of plume samples yields estimates of the mass concentration and size distribution of particles, which are used to quantify their contribution to acoustic backscatter. The result shows negligible effects of plume particles on acoustic backscatter within the initial 10-m rise of the plume. This suggests turbulence-induced temperature fluctuations are the dominant backscattering mechanism within lower levels of the plume. Furthermore, inversion of the observed acoustic backscatter for the standard deviation of temperature within the plume yields a reasonable match with the in situ temperature measurements made by a conductivity-temperature-depth instrument. This finding shows that turbulence-induced temperature fluctuations are the dominant backscattering mechanism and demonstrates the potential of using acoustic backscatter as a remote-sensing tool to measure the temperature variability within a hydrothermal plume.
ABSTRACT
At high frequencies, the attenuation measured in sand sediments is larger than that predicted by Biot theory. To account for this discrepancy, perturbation theory is used to incorporate losses due to scattering by porosity variations into both Biot's poroelastic equations and the effective density fluid model. While previous results showed that fluctuations in the bulk frame modulus were insufficient to produce significant attenuation in a sand sediment, modest levels of fluctuations in the porosity produce significant scattering loss. By using the sediment parameters and the heterogeneity power spectrum measured during the Sediment Acoustics Experiment in 2004, the perturbation theory result shows good agreement with the sound speed and attenuation data without any free parameters.
ABSTRACT
A rough-interface reverberation model is developed for range-dependent environments. First-order perturbation theory is employed, and the unperturbed background medium can be layered and heterogeneous with arbitrary range dependence. To calculate the reverberation field, two-way forward scatter due to the slowly changing unperturbed environment is handled by fast numerical methods. Backscatter due to small roughness superimposed on any of the slowly varying interfaces is handled efficiently using a Monte Carlo approach. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the application of the model. The primary purpose of the model is to incorporate relevant physics while improving computational speed.
ABSTRACT
Geoacoustic inversion work has typically been carried out at frequencies below 1 kHz, assuming flat, horizontally stratified bottom models. Despite the relevance to Navy sonar systems many of which operate at mid-frequencies (1-10 kHz), limited inversion work has been carried out in this frequency band. This paper is an effort to demonstrate the viability of geoacoustic inversion using bottom loss data between 2 and 5 kHz. The acoustic measurements were taken during the Shallow Water 2006 Experiment off the coast of New Jersey. A half-space bottom model, with three parameters density, compressional wave speed, and attenuation, was used for inversion by fitting the model to data in the least-square sense. Inverted sediment sound speed and attenuation were compared with direct measurements and with inversion results using different techniques carried out in SW06. Inverted results of the present work are consistent with other measurements, considering the known spatial variability in this area. The observations and modeling results demonstrate that forward scattering from topographical changes is important at mid-frequencies and should be taken into account in sound propagation predictions and geoacoustic inversion. To cope with fine-scale topographic variability, measurement technique such as averaging over tracks may be necessary.
ABSTRACT
While Biot theory can successfully account for the dispersion observed in sand sediments, the attenuation at high frequencies has been observed to increase more rapidly than Biot theory would predict. In an effort to account for this additional loss, perturbation theory is applied to Biot's poroelastic equations to model the loss due to the scattering of energy from heterogeneities in the sediment. A general theory for propagation loss is developed and applied to a medium with a randomly varying frame bulk modulus. The theory predicts that these heterogeneities produce an overall softening of the medium as well as scattering of energy from the mean fast compressional wave into incoherent fast and slow compressional waves. This theory is applied to two poroelastic media: a weakly consolidated sand sediment and a consolidated sintered glass bead pack. The random variations in the frame modulus do not have significant effects on the propagation through the sand sediment but do play an important role in the propagation through the consolidated medium.
