Effects of sea surface roughness on the mid-frequency acoustic pulse decay in shallow water

Abstract

Recent and ongoing efforts to characterize sea bed parameters from measured acoustic pulse decay have neglected the effects of sea surface roughness. In this paper, these effects are investigated using a rough surface version of RAMPE, RAMSURF, and random rough surface realizations, calculated from a 2D JONSWAP sea surface spectrum with directional spreading. Azimuthal dependence is investigated for sandy bottoms and found that the rate of pulse decay increases when the surface wave fronts are perpendicular to the path of acoustic propagation and higher significant wave height results in higher decay rates. Additionally, the effects from sea surface roughness are found to vary with different waveguide parameters including but not limited to sound speed profile, water depth, and seabed properties. Of particular interest are the combined effects of sea bed properties and rough sea surfaces. It is shown that when clay like sediments are present, higher-order modes are strongly attenuated and effects due to interaction with the rough sea surface are less pronounced. Finally, possible influences of sea-state and 3D out-of-plane propagation effects on the seabed characterization efforts will be discussed. [Work supported by ONR.]