COMPILE—A Generic Benchmark Case for Predictions of Marine Pile-Driving Noise

Abstract

The prediction of underwater noise emissions from impact pile driving during near-shore and offshore construction activities and its potential effect on the marine environment has been a major field of research for several years. A number of different modeling approaches have been suggested recently to predict the radiated sound pressure at different distances and depths from a driven pile. As there are no closed-form analytical solutions for this complex class of problems and for a lack of publicly available measurement data, the need for a benchmark case arises to compare the different approaches. Such a benchmark case was set up by the Institute of Modelling and Computation, Hamburg University of Technology (Hamburg, Germany) and the Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO, The Hague, The Netherlands). Research groups from all over the world, who are involved in modeling sound emissions from offshore pile driving, were invited to contribute to the first so-called COMPILE (a portmanteau combining computation, comparison, and pile) workshop in Hamburg in June 2014. In this paper, the benchmark case is presented, alongside an overview of the seven models and the associated results contributed by the research groups from six different countries. The modeling results from the workshop are discussed, exhibiting a remarkable consistency in the provided levels out to several tens of kilometers. Additionally, possible future benchmark case extensions are proposed.Index Terms-Benchmark case, impact pile driving, underwater acoustics.

Optimal Transmission of Interface Vibration Wavelets—A Simulation of Seabed Seismic Responses

“…More studies of the propagation of vibration energy from piling activities will be needed to estimate the environmental impact of these and other similar real operations. Currently the water-borne acoustic outputs are being assessed in a sequence of conferences [41], but the effects of vibration on the benthic life may be found to be as significant. They can be linked to the improved techniques for measurement of the water particle velocity and the sensitivity of benthic fauna to this energy form.…”

Structure-Borne Wave Radiation by Impact and Vibratory Piling in Offshore Installations: From Sound Prediction to Auditory Damage

“…This case, although useful for validation purposes, cannot be compared to the one presented here due to considerable differences in the system parameters, i.e., pile dimensions, soil conditions and water depth. In this section, predictions of the model are compared to data available in the literature from three measurement campaigns [17,31,42] and one theoretical benchmark case study [43]. In the cases referring to offshore measurements [17,31,42], the time history of the applied force is not always known.…”

“…However, the input energy of the impact hammer is always mentioned together with the remaining system parameters, and therefore, a rough comparison with the model predictions is possible. For the benchmark case [43], the time history of the input force is explicitly provided by the authors, and therefore, a more complete quantitative comparison of the noise levels is considered.…”

“…The last case analyzed here corresponds to the one presented in [43]. It is a benchmark case study developed for the validation of models used for noise predictions from pile driving.…”

“…The attenuation of compressional and shear waves in the soil is assumed equal to α p = 0.47 dB/λ and α s = 1.69 dB/λ, respectively. Due to the explicit incorporation of shear rigidity in the soil description, the extra attenuation in the embedded length of the pile considered in [43] is omitted. Figure 11.…”