Acoustic propagation uncertainty in internal wave environments using an ocean-acoustic joint model

An ocean-acoustic joint model is developed for research of acoustic propagation uncertainty in internal wave environments.The internal waves are numerically produced by tidal forcing over a continental slope using an ocean model.Three parameters(i.e.,internal wave,source depth,and water depth)contribute to the dynamic waveguide environments,and result in stochastic sound fields.The sensitivity of the transmission loss(TL)to environment parameters,statistical characteristics of the TL variation,and the associated physical mechanisms are investigated by the Sobol sensitivity analysis method,the Monte Carlo sampling,and the coupled normal mode theory,respectively.The results show that the TL is most sensitive to the source depth in the near field,resulted from the initial amplitudes of higher-order modes;while in middle and far fields,the internal waves are responsible for more than 80%of the total acoustic propagation contribution.In addition,the standard deviation of the TL in the near field and the shallow layer is smaller than those in the middle and far fields and the deep layer.

The rapid uncertainty prediction of the ocean-acoustic coupled model

Focusing on the rapid prediction of acoustic field uncertainty in environment with temporal and spatial sound speed perturbation, evolvement of sound speed structure over time is predicted based on the ocean-acoustic coupled model to obtain the uncertainty distribution of the vertical structure of sound speed. Further, a method combining the arbitrary polynomial chaos expansion with the empirical orthogonal function is proposed to reduce the dimensionality of uncertain parameters and to obtain the uncertainty distribution of the acoustic field. Simulations have shown that the computational complexity can be reduced by 2 orders of magnitude compared to the conventional polynomial chaos expansion while ensures the same precision.Moreover, the computational complexity is not influenced by the complexity of the sound speed profile. The acoustic field and uncertainty predicted in uncertain environment by proposed method also have been tested with the experimental data.

Capturing uncertainties of the underwater acoustic environment based on an ocean-acoustic coupled model

Considering the uncertain effects of temporal and spatial changes in the marine en- vironment on the underwater acoustic environment, we established an ocean-acoustic coupled numerical model and performed a parallel calculation. This model incorporated acoustic calcu- lations into the dynamic ocean, thereby achieving a dynamic forecasting and assessment of the acoustic environment. Furthermore, we adopted the ensemble prediction method to predict the vertical structure of temperature in a classic cross-section, the sound speed of the cross-section of the investigated sea area, and transmission losses. We gave the prediction errors of the sound speed profile as well as the 90% probability interval of transmission losses and the uncertainty histograms of the sound speeds, transmission losses, and sonar ranges at different depths and frequencies. The results reflected the influence of marine temporal and spacial variations on the uncertainties of the underwater acoustic environment, and the results also quantified the uncertainties of the underwater acoustic environment parameters. The experimental results indicate that the method used in this study is able to delineate and quantify the uncertainties of the underwater acoustic environment caused by marine dynamic changes.