Modeling of subcritical penetration into sediments due to interface roughness

Abstract

Recent experimental results reveal acoustic penetration into sandy sediments at grazing angles below the critical angle. We have been investigating a mechanism for subcritical penetration based on scattering at a rough water-sediment interface. Using perturbation theory, a numerically tractable three-dimensional model has been developed for simulating experiments. Data-model comparisons show that interface roughness is a viable 11)pothesis for the observed subcritical penetration.