Experimental measurement of acoustic properties in snow

Abstract

This paper presents the results of field experiments done for the measurement of attenuation constant and speed of sound in the snow medium. The field experiments were conducted at two locations corresponding to relatively dry and wet snow. The main objective of our method is to overcome the potential limitations of the other methods. There are two major concerns: one is sound signal leakage and the other is the measurement need to be done within a same layer of snowpack. The ref lections from the boundaries will affect the measurements. In our experiments the transducers are kept far from the snowpack boundaries, so that there will be no likelihood of strong ref lected signals from the boundaries. These issues have not been addressed by the other researchers. This work adds to the measurement results of the attenuation constant and speed of sound in snow that are available in the research literature. It is found that sound signal attenuation greatly depends on the frequency of sound signal and wetness of snow.