Modeling of the out-of-plane pulse propagation in the SWARM95 experiment

Abstract

The acoustical data collected in the shallow water acoustics in a random medium (SWARM95) experiment on the continental shelf off New Jersey in 1995 have shown that the temporal variations of the time series of the airgun signals (center frequency 75 Hz and bandwidth 50 Hz) are both range and azimuthal dependent. A full-wave broadband PE model is used to simulate such shallow water pulse propagation at different horizontal bearings. The time-dependent shallow water internal wave fluctuations constructed with a broad spectrum of excitation and the solitonlike thermocline displacements based on the in situ observations are included in the numerical simulation as well as the bathmetry. The vertical wavefronts and the 2-h time histories of the repeated transmissions from airgun positions above and below the thermocline are calculated and displayed. The simulated data and the experimental data of the receiver arrays at different locations with an approximately 10-km cross-range distance are compared. The results suggest that the azimuthal dependence of the received signals correlate to both the internal wave fields and the bathmetric variations.