Experimental Study on Source Level Estimation Techniques of Underwater Sound Source in Reverberant Water Tank

Abstract

The acoustic power is used as a primary index characterizing underwater sound sources and could be defined by its source level. The source level has been assessed using various experimental techniques such as the reverberation time method and reverberant tank plot method. While the reverberation time method requires reverberation time data extracted in a preliminary experiment in a reverberant water tank, the reverberant tank plot method only needs acoustic pressure data directly obtained at the reverberation water tank. In this research, these experimental techniques were studied in comparative experiments to estimate the source levels of underwater sources in a reverberant water tank. This paper summarizes the basic theories and procedures of these experimental techniques and presents the experimental results for an underwater source in a long cuboid water tank using each technique, along with a discussion.

Keywords

• reverberant water tank
• acoustic power measurement
• source level
• reverberation time
• reverberant tank plot