New underwater acoustic tank facility at Georgia Tech

Abstract

A large underwater acoustic tank facility located in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech has recently been completed. The facility includes a rectangular concrete water tank 25 feet deep, 25 feet wide, and 34 feet long containing around 160,000 gallons of water. There are three computer-controlled positioners: an x-y-z-θ positioner and a z-θ positioner mounted on carriages and a bottom mounted rotator. The facility has a large rectangular nearfield array which can be used either as a receiver or a transmitter. A single vertical nearfield line array can be translated by the x-y positioner to synthesize a cylindrical nearfield receiving array. The rectangular nearfield transmitting array and the synthesized cylindrical receiving array were designed to be used with the bottom mounted rotator to measure the true farfield bistatic target strength of any target up to one meter in length as a function of the target aspect angle. Such measurements can be done from 2 kHz to over 10 kHz. The tank is being used for transducer development, materials, and flow noise studies in addition to structural acoustics. Several available multichannel data acquisition systems will be described. [Work supported, in part, by a DURIP grant from ONR.]