Sonic boom wave propagation from air into water: Implications for marine mammals

Abstract

At the 1993 NASA High Speed Research Program Sonic Boom Workshop, hosted by NASA Ames Research Center, it ws noted that the development of a high speed civil transport in the next several years will focus only on overwater travel. At that meeting it was also made clear that some have raised concerns about the effects of sonic booms on the activities of marine mammals. Once a fleet of supersonic passenger aircraft are in service, there could be hundreds of flights per day, and, therefore, the effects of sonic booms on marine mammals should be well understood. The purpose of the present paper is to briefly describe the acoustic pressure and intensity variations that one can predict underwater due to a sonic boom impinging on an air–water interface. Arbitrary angles of incidence are investigated, and the proportion of energy incident and reflected from the interface are given for typical sonic boom wave forms.