NONLINEAR PARAMETER ESTIMATION IN WATER-SATURATED SANDY SEDIMENT WITH DIFFERENCE FREQUENCY ACOUSTIC WAVES

Abstract

Nonlinear acoustic responses of water-saturated sediments are very important to understand nonlinear phenomena of gassy ocean sediments. Especially, the second harmonic, the sum and the difference frequency acoustic waves in water-saturated sediments can provide practical criteria to estimate the nonlinear parameter of gassy sediments. In this paper, the difference frequency acoustic wave in water-saturated sandy sediment was observed in a water tank experiment with a pulse transmission technique. Its pressure level was 12 dB higher than the background noise level at a maximum undistorted driving pressure of source acoustic transducer. The experimental results were compared with a theoretical estimation of the parametric acoustic array. The nonlinear parameter of water-saturated sandy sediment was also estimated as 73 with their comparison. Thisvalue can be utilized as the background information to estimate gas void fraction in the water-saturated gassy sandy sediment.