The development of a sonobuoy using sparker acoustic sources as analternative to explosive SUS devices

摘要

This paper is on the development and testing of sparker acousticsources deployed in a sonobuoy for environmental measurements.Currently, signal underwater sound (SUS) explosive acoustic sourcedevices are used in the measurement of acoustic transmission loss andreverberation. Sparker acoustic sources are an alternative to explosivesthat offer potential as a cost-effective method of obtainingcontrollable, multiple, broadband acoustic pulses at various depths.Aircraft deployment constrains the design to a sonobuoy package, whichlimits the size of the electrical driver. Consequently, sparkerefficiency of converting electrical into acoustic energy determines thesource level. We report on development of high efficiency sparkeracoustic sources, integration of the sparkers into a sonobuoy, and onsea tests characterizing the acoustic source level and spectrum from thesparker based sonobuoy. Sparker operation in ocean water typically has alow efficiency of converting electrical energy into acoustic energy. Inorder to maximize the source level produced by the sonobuoy, weinvestigated how the acoustic efficiency changes with sparkerparameters, including geometry, electrode gap and electrical driverdesign. Based on test results we selected the most promising candidatesfor sonobuoy deployment. This lead to the design and fabrication of asonobuoy that operates at high efficiency and accommodates small sparkerarrays. We plan to report results of sea tests to characterize theacoustic energy and spectrum produced by the sonobuoy for operation as afunction of depth, number of sparkers and electrical driver energy