Stewart A. L. Glegg
Robert Coulson
Anthony Le Vigne
Ctr. for Acoust. and Vib., Dept. of Ocean Eng., Florida Atlantic Univ., Boca Raton, FL 33431
A laboratory scale model of the Santa Lucia escarpment (34(degrees)--35 (degrees)N, 121(degrees)--122 (degrees)W) has been built at a scale of 1/10 000, and this paper will describe the design of the model and the downslope propagation measurements which have been made. The bathymetry of this region is typical of the continental shelf on the west coast of the United States, and the model includes a large area with a 2(degrees) slope in shallow water (400 m depth full scale) which extends into a region with a 14(degrees) slope at the deeper end where it joins the abyssal plain (4000 m depth full scale). The slope also includes three dimensional features such as a spur which extends out into the abyssal plain. The base of the model is made of concrete simulating a rock basement, and the purpose of the study is to investigate the bathymetric refraction of propagating sound waves over a region with a variable slope. The measurements of the sound propagation will be compared with calculations based on adiabatic mode theory. [Work supported by ONR.]