Laboratory measurements of sound speed and attenuation in water‐saturated artificial sediments as a function of porosity.

Abstract

Several models have been proposed to describe the sound speed and attenuation of acoustic waves in water‐saturated granular sediments. The difference between the predictions of competing models can be only a few percent, and it is difficult to obtain both sufficient knowledge of the sediment physical parameters and sufficiently small measurement uncertainty to adequately verify competing models. Furthermore, the inhomogeneity of natural sediments causes additional measurement and interpretation uncertainty. Therefore, well‐controlled laboratory measurements are useful for model validation and also facilitate exploration of the effects of sediment physical parameter variation. A method for controlling the porosity of an ensemble of water‐saturated granular particles [Schroter et al., Phys. Rev. E 71, 030301(R) (2005)] was used to prepare columns of artificial sediments, composed of monodisperse 280‐μm‐diameter glass spheres and distilled water of varying porosity. Acoustic time‐of‐flight measurements were ...