Simulations of time spreading in shallow water propagation

Abstract

Pulse propagation in a shallow water wave guide leads to time spreading due to multipath effects. Results of PE simulations will be described for pulse propagation in shallow water with a rough sea surface and a flat sandy sea floor. The simulations illustrate that such time spreading may be significantly less at longer ranges than for the flat surface case. Pressure fields are simulated in two space dimensions and have been obtained using a wide-angle PE code developed by Rosenberg [A. D. Rosenberg, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 105, 144–153 (1999)]. The effect of rough surface scattering is to cause acoustic energy initially propagating at relatively high angles but still below the critical angle at the sea floor to be eventually shifted to grazing angles above the critical angle. This energy is then lost into the bottom, effectively stripping higher propagating modes. The surviving energy at longer ranges is concentrated in the lowest modes and shows little effect of time spreading. Thus, the effect of rough surface scattering is found to produce a simpler temporal field structure than if the surface were treated as flat. [Work supported by ONR.]