Decoherence effects in 3D fluctuating environments: Numerical and experiment study

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the study of the effects of ocean fluctuations on acoustic propagation. The development of an ultrasonic testbench allowing to reproduce, under laboratory conditions, the influence of 3D fluctuations on received acoustic data is presented. The experimental protocol consists in transmitting, in a water tank, a high-frequency wavetrain throughout an acoustic slab presenting a plane input face and a randomly rough output face. The various regimes of saturation and unsaturation classically used in the literature are explored by tuning the statistics of the so-called RAFAL (RAndom Faced Acoustic Lens). Comparisons to a “corresponding” oceanic medium are obtained via a scaling procedure. In parallel, numerical tools were developed to provide meaningful comparison with the acquired data. Both based on a split-step Fourier algorithm, a 3D PE simulation of the tank experiment and a 3D PE simulation of real scale acoustic propagation programs are presented. Features of acoustic fields pertu...