ASA 128th Meeting - Austin, Texas - 1994 Nov 28 .. Dec 02

4pUW12. Backscattering in shallow-water waveguides caused by obstacles on the seafloor.

Finn B. Jensen

SACLANT Undersea Res. Ctr., I-19138 La Spezia, Italy

As a result of a recent workshop on low-frequency reverberation and scattering modeling organized by S. A. Chin-Bing and D. B. King at NRL-SSC, it became evident that accurate wave-theoretic models are available for studying feature backscattering in ocean waveguides. A well tested, two-way coupled mode code [R. B. Evans, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 74, 188--195 (1983)] is applied to compute backscattering from a single obstacle on the seafloor. Of particular interest is the effect of height and slope of the scattering facet on the reverberant field. It is shown that only steep slopes cause strong backscattering.