Ocean sound channel ray path perturbations from internal-wave shear and strain

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 118 (2005): 2899-2903, doi:10.1121/1.2062127.The relative importance of internal-wave strain and internal-wave shear on perturbation of acoustic ray trajectories in the ocean is analyzed. Previous estimates based on the Garrett-Munk internal-wave spectral model are updated using data from recent field studies of internal waves. Estimates of the ratio of the rms shear effect to the rms strain effect based on data from the upper kilometer of ocean are as high as 0.25–0.4, exceeding the estimates of 0.08–0.17 stemming from the model. Increased strength of three phenomena that have shear to strain ratios higher than the internal-wave average can cause this effect. These are near-inertial waves, internal tides, and vortical modes.This work was funded by grants from the U.S. Office of Naval Research

An iterative three-dimensional parabolic equation solver for propagation above irregular boundaries

This paper describes the development of an iterative three-dimensional parabolic equation solver that takes into account the effects of irregular boundaries and refraction from a layered atmosphere. A terrain-following coordinate transformation, based on the well-known Beilis-Tappert mapping, is applied to the narrow-angle parabolic equation in an inhomogeneous media. The main advantage of this approach, which has been used in two dimensions in the past, is the simplification of the impedance boundary condition at the earth surface. The transformed initial-boundary value problem is discretized using the Crank-Nicholson marching scheme in the propagating direction and second-order finite-differences in the transversal plane. The proposed method relies on an efficient iterative fixed-point solver which involves the inversion of tridiagonal matrices only. The accuracy of the method is evaluated through a comparison with boundary element simulations in a homogeneous atmosphere above a Gaussian hill. Results show that transversal scattering occur in the shadow zone of the obstacle where the 2D parabolic equation underestimates the pressure amplitude. The model is particularly suited for the simulation of infrasound in a three-dimensional environment with realistic topographie

A computational study of the effect of windscreen shape and flow resistivity on turbulent wind noise reduction

This is the published version. Copyright 2011 Acoustical Society of AmericaIn this paper, numerical simulations are used to study the turbulentwind noise reduction effect of microphone windscreens with varying shapes and flow resistivities. Typical windscreen shapes consisting of circular, elliptical, and rectangular cylinders are investigated. A turbulent environment is generated by placing a solid circular cylinder upstream of the microphone. An immersed-boundary method with a fifth-order weighted essentially non-oscillatory scheme is implemented to enhance the simulation accuracy for high-Reynolds number flow around the solid cylinder as well as at the interface between the open air and the porous material comprising the windscreen. The Navier–Stokes equations for incompressible flow are solved in the open air. For the flow inside the porous material, a modified form of the Zwikker–Kosten equation is solved. The results show that, on average, the circular and horizontal ellipse windscreens have similar overall wind noise reduction performance, while the horizontal ellipse windscreen with medium flow resistivity provides the most effective wind noise reduction among all the considered cases. The vertical ellipse windscreen with high flow resistivity, in particular, increases the wind noise because of increased self-generation of turbulence

Spectral broadening of sound scattered by advecting atmospheric turbulence

NRC publication: Ye