The penetrable wedge as a three-dimensional benchmark

Abstract

In 1989, members of the Acoustical Society of America developed a suite of range-dependent benchmark geometries, allowing the underwater acoustics community to compare the performance of analytical and numerical solutions to two-dimensional propagation problems. These benchmarks were successful in providing the acoustics community with a set of standards, and continue to be useful as reference geometries. Over the past decade, there have been significant advances in analytical and numerical solutions to three-dimensional propagation problems, and establishing three-dimensional benchmarks is a timely development. A useful benchmark must eliminate the undesired complications of a real-word environment but retain the essential physics of the problem while being tractable to a variety of modelers. A geometry which satisfies these constraints is the ocean wedge with a penetrable basement. The three-dimensional Green’s function for the penetrable wedge has already been studied by a number of investigators, and measured with scale-model tank experiments. The state of modeling and measurement for the wedge will be discussed in the context of its usefulness as a three-dimensional benchmark.