A corrected effective density fluid model is developed for predicting sound speed dispersion and attenuation coefficient in gassy sediments. An acoustic experiment was undertaken to measure the attenuation coefficient in a frequency band of 600 to 3000 Hz in gassy unsaturated sand. The measured frequency spectra of the attenuation coefficient show four peaks due to bubble resonance. Then a method of using several modified Gaussian functions to model bubble size distribution is proposed to fit measured attenuation data, which shows that the magnitudes of the fitted model attenuation coefficients are broadly in agreement with those measured attenuation data.
A predictive model for acoustic dispersion and attenuation in gassy sediments is proposed. The model combines the linear solution for gas-bubble pulsations in a viscoelastic medium with corrected Biot equations involving gas-bubble pulsations. Numerical results for sound speed and attenuation are compared with predictions from Anderson and Hampton's model to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed model. The most important advantage of the current model is that it combines the dispersion regimes associated with gas-bubble pulsations and relative motion between the pore water and solid framework. The reflection coefficient at the water/gassy-sediment interface is derived based on the current model, and numerical results show that gas-bubble resonance can lead to the highest reflection. This model can also be used with a full acoustic inversion to estimate gas-bubble size distributions.
A vertical line array can be deployed in deep water below the critical depth, the depth where the sound speed equals the sound speed at the surface, to take advantage of the lower ambient noise level (compared with above the critical depth) for target detection. To differentiate a submerged source from a surface source, a Fourier transform based method [McCargar and Zurk, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 133, EL320–325 (2013)] was proposed for a narrowband signal that exploits the depth-related harmonic (oscillation) feature of the beam power time series associated with the target arrival. In this paper, incoherent matched beam processing is used to estimate the target depth. Where the replica (calculated) beam intensity or amplitude time series best matches that of the data is used to estimate the source depth. This method is shown, based on simulated data, to provide a better depth resolution in general and better ability to estimate the depth of a very shallow source (say at 10 m) and can be used to complement the Fourier transform based method. It can be extended to process (random) broadband signals and to environments where the Lloyd's mirror theory is not valid.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.