Applicability and reliability of an experimental method measuring underwater acoustic radiation efficiency of floating box-type plate structures in a reverberant water tank

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the applicability and reliability of an experimental method measuring the underwater acoustic radiation efficiencies of floating plate structures in a reverberant water tank. For the purpose, an experimental method for estimating the acoustic power of a source in a reverberant sound field has been introduced and applied to measure the acoustic radiation efficiencies of two floating box-type plate structures excited by a logarithmic sine sweeping force in a water tank. The validity of the adopted experimental method has been examined by the comparison with numerical results obtained by a fully coupled vibroacoustic analysis with an infinite radiation boundary condition for the structures. From the results, it is confirmed that the experimental method for measuring the underwater acoustic radiation efficiency of floating plate structures in a reverberant water tank is reliably applicable for high-frequency ranges above the Schroeder frequency of the water tank.

Keywords

• Underwater acoustic radiation efficiency
• Experimental method
• Reverberant water tank
• Floating plate structure
• Numerical validation