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AE Newhall

Publications and source records attributed to AE Newhall.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Acoustic field variability induced by time evolving internal wave fields

A space- and time-dependent internal wave model was developed for a shallow water area on the New Jersey continental shelf and combined with a propagation algorithm to perform numerical simulations of acoustic field variability. This data-constrained environmental model links the oceanographic field, dominated by internal waves, to the random sound speed distribution that drives acoustic field fluctuations in this region. Working with a suite of environmental measurements along a 42-km track, a parameter set was developed that characterized the influence of the internal wave field on sound speed perturbations in the water column. The acoustic propagation environment was reconstructed from this set in conjunction with bottom parameters extracted by use of acoustic inversion techniques. The resulting space- and time-varying sound speed field was synthesized from an internal wave field composed of both a spatially diffuse (linear) contribution and a spatially localized (nonlinear) component, the latter consisting of solitary waves propagating with the internal tide. Acoustic simulation results at 224 and 400 Hz were obtained from a solution to an elastic parabolic equation and are presented as examples of propagation through this evolving environment. Modal decomposition of the acoustic field received at a vertical line array was used to clarify the effects of both internal wave contributions to the complex structure of the received signals.

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Modeling mode arrivals in the 1995 SWARM experiment acoustic transmissions

As part of the Shallow Water Acoustics in a Random Medium (SWARM) experiment, a 16 element WHOI vertical line array (WVLA) was moored in 70 m of water off the New Jersey coast. A 400-Hz acoustic tomography source was moored some 32-km shoreward of this array, such that an acoustic path was created that was anti-parallel to the primary propagation direction for shelf-generated internal wave solitons. The presence of these soliton internal waves in the acoustic waveguide causes significant coupling of energy between propagating acoustic modes, creating fluctuations in modal intensities and modal peak arrival times, as well as time spreading of the pulses. Two methods by which acoustic propagation and scattering in soliton-filled waveguides can be modeled are presented here in order to understand and explain the scattering observed in the SWARM field data. The first method utilizes the Preisig and Duda [IEEE J. Ocean. Eng. 22, 256-269 (1997)] Sudden Interface Approximation (SIA) to represent the solitons. The second method, which is computationally slower, uses a finely meshed, "propagated" thermistor record to simulate the solitons in the SWARM experiment waveguide. Both numerical methods are found to generate scattering characteristics that are similar to the SWARM field data.

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Acoustic normal mode fluctuation statistics in the 1995 SWARM internal wave scattering experiment

In order to understand the fluctuations imposed upon low frequency (50 to 500 Hz) acoustic signals due to coastal internal waves, a large multilaboratory, multidisciplinary experiment was performed in the Mid-Atlantic Bight in the summer of 1995. This experiment featured the most complete set of environmental measurements (especially physical oceanography and geology) made to date in support of a coastal acoustics study. This support enabled the correlation of acoustic fluctuations to clearly observed ocean processes, especially those associated with the internal wave field. More specifically, a 16 element WHOI vertical line array (WVLA) was moored in 70 m of water off the New Jersey coast. Tomography sources of 224 Hz and 400 Hz were moored 32 km directly shoreward of this array, such that an acoustic path was constructed that was anti-parallel to the primary, onshore propagation direction for shelf generated internal wave solitons. These nonlinear internal waves, produced in packets as the tide shifts from ebb to flood, produce strong semidiurnal effects on the acoustic signals at our measurement location. Specifically, the internal waves in the acoustic waveguide cause significant coupling of energy between the propagating acoustic modes, resulting in broadband fluctuations in modal intensity, travel-time, and temporal coherence. The strong correlations between the environmental parameters and the internal wave field include an interesting sensitivity of the spread of an acoustic pulse to solitons near the receiver.

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