Vol 63, No 2 (2017)

High-frequency diffraction of a plane acoustic wave incident at a small angle to the axis of a narrow hyperboloid of revolution is considered. By the parabolic equation method in spheroidal coordinates, the leading term of field asymptotics in the near-surface boundary layer is constructed in the form of an integral involving Whittaker functions. Difficulties associated with its calculation are considered. Results obtained for the field at the surface of a perfectly rigid hyperboloid are presented. They reproduce the predicted high-frequency diffraction effects.

A new generalized sixth-order nonintegrable equation is derived to model axisymmetric longitudinal wave propagation in an inhomogeneous cylindrical shell interacting with a nonlinear elastic medium. Exact soliton-like solutions to this equation are constructed with allowance for geometric and physical nonlinearities, both individually and in combination.

The potentiality of a phoxonic crystal for sensing of biodiesel in a binary mixture of diesel and biodiesel is theoretically investigated. Using the transfer matrix method, the transmission of acoustic and optical waves through a periodic one-dimensional crystal of Si–SiO₂ layers is studied. A pass band is created in the band gap region by introducing a cavity in the considered one-dimensional crystal structure. This pass band can also be considered as a defect mode, and it is found that its position is highly dependent on mole concentration of binary mixture of biodiesel and diesel present in the cavity. The sensitivity of the sensor for a binary mixture of biodiesel and diesel in the cavity with various mole concentrations is estimated. Simulated results provide a valuable guidance for designing a phoxonic crystal sensor consisting of a defect layer.

The paper is devoted to the analytic study and numerical simulation of mid-frequency acoustic signal propagation in a two-dimensional inhomogeneous random shallow-water medium. The study was carried out by the cross section method (local modes). We present original theoretical estimates for the behavior of the average acoustic field intensity and show that at different distances, the features of propagation loss behavior are determined by the intensity of fluctuations and their horizontal scale and depend on the initial regular parameters, such as the emission frequency and size of sound losses in the bottom. We establish analytically that for the considered waveguide and sound frequency parameters, mode coupling effect has a local character and weakly influences the statistics. We establish that the specific form of the spatial spectrum of sound velocity inhomogeneities for the statistical patterns of the field intensity is insignificant during observations in the range of shallow-water distances of practical interest.

We study the phase characteristics of echo signals during vertical acoustic sounding of a water medium with narrowly directed emission. We experimentally demonstrate the possibility of measuring the dependence of the phase of echo signals on the delay for a probe signal with linear frequency modulation. We substantiate the possibility of remote determination of sound velocity variations in water.

The paper presents the spatial variability of cavitation thresholds and some hydrological and hydrochemical parameters of seawater in the interfrontal zone of the Pacific Subarctic Front, in the Drake Passage, and in the equatorial part of the Pacific Ocean, measured in the near-surface layer to a depth of 70 m.

The potential negative effects of sound, particularly active sonar, on marine mammals has received considerable attention in the past decade. Numerous behavioral response studies are ongoing around the world to examine such direct exposures. However, detailed aspects of the acoustic field (beyond simply exposure level) in the vicinity of sonar operations both during real operations and experimental exposures have not been regularly measured. For instance, while exposures are typically repeated and intermittent, there is likely a gradual decay of the intense sonar ping due to reverberation that has not been well described. However, it is expected that the sound field between successive sonar pings would exceed natural ambient noise within the sonar frequency band if there were no sonar activity. Such elevated sound field between the pings may provide cues to nearby marine mammals on source distances, thus influencing potential behavioral response. Therefore, a good understanding of the noise field in these contexts is important to address marine mammal behavioral response to MFAS exposure. Here we investigate characteristics of the sound field during a behavioral response study off California using drifting acoustic recording buoys. Acoustic data were collected before, during, and after playbacks of simulated mid-frequency active sonar (MFAS). An incremental computational method was developed to quantify the inter-ping sound field during MFAS transmissions. Additionally, comparisons were made between inter-ping sound field and natural background in three distinctive frequency bands: low-frequency (<3 kHz), MFA-frequency (3–4.5 kHz), and high-frequency (>4.5 kHz) bands. Results indicate significantly elevated sound pressure levels (SPLs) in the inter-ping interval of the MFA-frequency band compared to natural background levels before and after playbacks. No difference was observed between inter-ping SPLs and natural background levels in the low- and high-frequency bands. In addition, the duration of elevated inter-ping sound field depends on the MFAS source distance. At a distance of 900–1300 m from the source, inter-ping sound field at the exposure frequency is observed to remain 5 dB above natural background levels for approximately 15 s, or 65%, of the entire inter-ping interval. However, at a distance of 2000 m, the 5 dB elevation of the inter-ping SPLs lasted for just 7 s, or 30% of the inter-ping interval. The prolonged elevation of sound field beyond the brief sonar ping at such large distances is most likely due to volume reverberation of the marine environment, although multipath propagation may also contribute to this.

The relationships for optimizing a selective estimate of the correlation matrix of classical (initial and modified) and fast projection algorithms in a complex noise situation were determined. Model investigations on the comparison of the resolution of classical optimized algorithms with the characteristics of two variants of fast projection algorithms were performed. The algorithms were compared using the criterion of a decrease in the time and reduction of the angular zone of the loss of a contact with a weak target when it intersects the path of an intense interfering signal. The relationships that correspond to the most economical realization of the fast algorithm were determined.

A generalized sidelobe canceler (GSC) approach is proposed for medical ultrasound imaging. The approach uses a set of adaptive weights instead of traditional non-adaptive weights, thus suppressing the interference and noise signal of echo data. In order to verify the validity of the proposed approach, Field II is applied to obtain the echo data of synthetic aperture (SA) for 13 scattering points and circular cysts. The performance of GSC is compared with SA using boxcar weights and Hamming weights, and is quantified by the full width at half maximum (FWHM) and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). Imaging of scattering point utilizing SA, SA (hamming), GSC provides FWHMs of 1.13411, 1.68910, 0.36195 mm and PSNRs of 60.65, 57.51, 66.72 dB, respectively. The simulation results of circular cyst also show that GSC can perform better lateral resolution than non-adaptive beamformers. Finally, an experiment is conducted on the basis of actual echo data of an ultrasound system, the imaging result after SA, SA (hamming), GSC provides PWHMs of 2.55778, 3.66776, 1.01346 mm at z = 75.6 mm, and 2.65430, 3.76428, 1.27889 mm at z = 77.3 mm, respectively.

We study how the conditions of excitation and detection influence the magnetoacoustic emission (MAE) parameters of ferromagnets. For a large group of metal ferromagnet samples differing in physical properties and dimensions, the dependence of the MAE amplitude on the frequency of the remagnetizing field has a similar nonmonotonic character. In all probed cases, the maximum of the amplitude corresponds to a field frequency of 3–5 Hz. The decrease in the MAE amplitude for a subsequent increase in the frequency of the alternating field is related to the action of eddy currents. It is shown that the size of the field corresponding to the MAE maximum, which for a given time dependence of the remagnetizing field can be determined by the time shift in an oscillogram, can be a new parameter of the structuroscopy of ferromagnets.