New England Sea Mounts Acoustics: Airgun experiment and geoacoustic inversion
Abstract
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is organizing the Task Force Ocean (TFO) Department Research Initiative (DRI) to study a 100 km b,y 100 km experimental area in the Atlantic Ocean. This area will be extensively studied by an interdisciplinary group of researchers,, and periodic at sea experiments will be performed in 2022 and 2023.The chosen area is centered around the Atlantis II Seamounts. I,t is a very specific and complex place: the water column undergoes massive fluctuations (notably because of the Gulf Stream) and the, bathymetry features massive seamount with steep slopes and corrugated seafloor. Our capacity to understand and predict acoustic pro,pagation (and thus sonar performance) in such an environment is unknown. Resolving this issue will require extensive interdisciplina,ry work by a group of researchers covering modeling, at-sea data collection, and data analysis. This specific project focuses on est,imating the seafloor properties of the experimental area. This is an important piece of the whole puzzle. Indeed, bottom interaction,s, notably with the seamounts, will create important 3D propagation effects. Those are affected not only by the bathymetry, but also, by the geoacoustic properties of the sub-bottom. As a result, those need to be estimated to understand the whole system. The main o,bjectives of the project are: 1) Develop methods to estimate geoacoustic properties in a deep water seamount context; 2) Conduct sea, trials in the TFO DRI area with an airgun; 3) Estimate geoacoustic models for the TFO DRI area; 4) Train a post-doctoral investigat,or and a graduate student. To reach the objectives, the project is divided into 5 technical tasks: propagation modeling (task 1), in,version method (task 2), field experiment (task 3), data analysis (task 4) and training (task 5).If the project is successful, it wi,ll enable better understanding (and hopefully forecasting) of acoustic propagation in a strategically important area. More broadly,,the project also contributes to developing new environmental assessment methods that can be used by the Navy to better predict sonar, performance.Approved for public release.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 06, 2022
- Source ID
- N000142312110
Entities
People
- Julien Bonnel
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution