The vertical shape of a buoyant acoustic streamer between depth control units

Abstract

When conducting marine seismic surveys it is important to know the vertical profile of the seismic streamer. Typically the streamer has a density that is different from the seawater; therefore the streamer is held at depth by depth control units, and the streamer׳s tail is held at the surface by a tail buoy. In this paper, a semi-analytical solution is presented. It is the first-order solution for the profile of a streamer, towed in a straight line, at a constant speed. The solution is adapted to describe the streamer shape when there are significant changes in cable density due to the presence of components over small regions. The resulting profiles have good agreement with a numerical solution evolved to the steady state.