Refraction and scattering into a sandy ocean sediment in the 30-40-kHz band

To observe sound penetration into a sandy sediment, a buried acoustic receiving array was insonified by a wide band sound source carried by a remotely operated vehicle. A slanting array design was used to avoid scattering artifacts. This design overcame possible problems in previous experiments, in which scattering artifacts from the array structure could be mistaken for a propagating wave. The experiments took place in a sandy sediment off the West coast of Florida, as part of the sediment acoustics experiment, which is a multidisciplinary effort to study sediment acoustics. A coherent angle, speed, and height estimation process searched through a four-dimensional search space, of source height and elevation angle, wave speed, and propagation delay to find spherical acoustic wave fronts. Three main categories of waves were found: first refracted, dominant nonrefracted and evanescent. Later acoustic arrivals, a fourth category, remain to be analyzed. Their relative intensities effectively characterize the sediment penetrating acoustic energy. The acoustic sound pressure level of penetrating waves below the critical grazing angle was found to be greater than expected for a flat interface.