Study on acoustic target strength characteristics of underwater composite rudder

In order to investigate the acoustic behavior of composite material, in this paper, the acoustic target strength (TS) of rudders is obtained by combining the finite element method with the automatically matched layer technique. However, besides the composite material mentioned above, the considered materials of rudder models also include steel. In addition, the results of abeam direction and other angles are computed. Finally, the magnitude of abeam TS versus frequency shows that the acoustic scattering property of composite model is better than that of steel one when the frequency is higher than 1600 Hz. Moreover, the acoustic scattering properties are totally different when frequency is lower than 600 Hz for models with composite and steel materials. As for directivity patterns, the TS of composite model in each direction is lower than that of steel model at 3800 Hz, which matches the conclusions mentioned above