Radiative transfer theory applied to ocean bottom modeling

Research on the propagation of acoustic waves in the ocean bottom sediment is of interest for active sonar applications such as target detection and remote sensing. The interaction of acoustic energy with the sea floor sublayers is usually modeled with techniques based on the full solution of the wa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2009-10, Vol.126 (4), p.1711-1723
Main Authors: Quijano, Jorge E., Zurk, Lisa M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
Exact sciences and technology
Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications)
Marine
Physics
Underwater sound
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Summary:Research on the propagation of acoustic waves in the ocean bottom sediment is of interest for active sonar applications such as target detection and remote sensing. The interaction of acoustic energy with the sea floor sublayers is usually modeled with techniques based on the full solution of the wave equation, which sometimes leads to mathematically intractable problems. An alternative way to model wave propagation in layered media containing random scatterers is the radiative transfer (RT) formulation, which is a well established technique in the electromagnetics community and is based on the principle of conservation of energy. In this paper, the RT equation is used to model the backscattering of acoustic energy from a layered elastic bottom sediment containing distributions of independent scatterers due to a constant single frequency excitation in the water column. It is shown that the RT formulation provides insight into the physical phenomena of scattering and conversion of energy between waves of different polarizations.
ISSN:0001-4966
1520-8524
DOI:10.1121/1.3203992