Experimental Validation of Reconstruction of Sound Source Radiation in an Underwater Half-Space Bounded by a Water-Air Interface

When a vibrating structure is located in a half-space bounded by a reflecting surface, the measured sound pressures are polluted by the reflection, so that they cannot show the actual sound radiation from the structure. The half-space spherical wave function expansion-based near-field acoustical holography approach is proposed to reconstruct the direct radiation from the sound source using the polluted sound pressures, which has been validated by numerical simulations. This paper deals with the experimental validation of this approach applied in an underwater half-space bounded by a water-air interface. The sound pressures measured in the half-space are used as the input data. The reconstructed sound pressures obtained are compared with benchmarks measured in a free space. The results indicate that the influences of the water-air interface reflection on the measured sound pressures can be greatly reduced in the entire frequency range investigated. The normalized relative reconstruction error introduced by the parameters of the hydrophone array and the water tank in the experiment is analyzed. The results of the experimental validation show that the proposed approach is promising for accurately measuring sound signals radiated from manned or unmanned vehicles or equipment underwater near a water-air interface.