Attenuation in randomly inhomogeneous sound channels

Abstract

Measurement of sound absorption in sea water by sound-channel experiments can be seriously affected by volume scattering. Ray diffusion caused by random inhomogeneities in sound speed leads to an additional component of attenuation independent of frequency. Order-of-magnitude estimates of diffusion loss, with the variance and scale size of perturbations determined from the sound-speed profiles, are in reasonable agreement for a broad range of experimental data.