A comparison between directly measured and inferred wave speeds from an acoustic propagation experiment in Currituck Sound.

An acoustic propagation experiment was conducted in Currituck Sound to characterize low-frequency propagation in a very-shallow-water estuarine environment. The water column properties were homogeneous over the study area, and the emphasis of this work is on understanding the propagation effects induced by the estuarine bed. During the experiment, low-frequency sound propagation measurements of waterborne sound and interface waves were acquired, and direct measurements of the compressional and shear wave properties were obtained at high frequencies. The propagation data consist of signals from a Combustive Sound Source recorded on bottom mounted geophones and a vertical line array of hydrophones. A statistical inference method was applied to obtain an estimate of the sediment compressional and shear wave speed profiles as a function of depth within the estuarine bed. The direct measurements were obtained in situ by inserting probes 30 cm into the sediment. Sediment acoustics models were fit to the high-frequency in situ data to enable comparison with the inferred low-frequency wave speeds. Overall, good agreement was found between the directly measured and inferred wave speeds for both the compressional and shear wave data.

In situ measurements of sediment acoustic properties in Currituck Sound and comparison to models.

In situ measurements of compressional and shear wave speed and attenuation were collected 30 cm below the water-sediment interface in Currituck Sound, North Carolina at two field locations having distinctly different sediment types: medium-to-fine-grained sand and fine-grained sand with approximately 10% mud content. Shear wave measurements were performed with bimorph transducers to generate and receive horizontally polarized shear waves in the 300 Hz to 1 kHz band, and compressional wave measurements were performed using hydrophones operated in the 5 kHz to 100 kHz band. Sediment samples were collected at both measurement sites and later analyzed in the laboratory to characterize the sediment grain size distribution for each field location. Compressional and shear wave speed and attenuation were estimated from the acoustic measurements, and preliminary comparisons to the extended Biot model by Chotiros and Isakson [J. Acoust. Soc. 135, 3264-3279 (2014)] and the viscous grain-shearing theory by Buckingham [J. Acoust. Soc. 136, 2478-2488 (2014)] were performed.