Improving sound diffusion in a reverberation tank using a randomly fluctuating surface

Abstract

Underwater reverberation environments that satisfy the conditions of uniformity and isotropy of the diffuse field can be used to measure the acoustic characteristics of underwater targets. This study combines two practical indicators — the standard deviation of the absolute sound pressure field (to indicate uniformity) and the analysis of the wavenumber spectrum in the spherical harmonics domain (to indicate isotropy) — for an accurate evaluation of the diffusion of the sound field in a reverberation tank. A method is proposed that can improve the narrow-band diffusion of the sound field by employing a randomly fluctuating surface. An acoustic experiment was performed in a reverberation water tank (1.2 m × 1 m × 0.8 m), where a randomly fluctuating surface was generated by making waves. The experimental results show that as the wave motion contributes effectively to the random reflection of sound rays in all directions, the uniformity and isotropy are improved significantly when the surface is fluctuating randomly. This work helps to ensure accurate measurements of the characteristics of underwater targets in reverberation tanks.