Technologies of seismic acoustic and electromagnetic monitoring of soils for prospecting and controlling hydrocarbon production: Arctic shelf,hard-to-extract reserves,and distributed deposits

Instrumental complexes for seismic acoustic and electromagnetic sensing of subsurface soils on the shelf of sea water areas and coastal territories have been designed, produced, and tested under natural conditions. Elements of the cognitive radio network and hydroacoustic stations of the safety system of coastal commercial enterprises are designed and prepared for commercial production. These elements are designed for the infrastructure of distant territories with explored and developed oil and gas deposits.     

Surface reverberation at sound field focusing in shallow water

A numerical experiment is carried out to study the long-range surface reverberation in the presence of intense surface waves for the case of using vertical transmitting arrays providing sound field focusing at different depths. To focus the field, a phase conjugation of acoustic waves from a probe source positioned at the focusing point is used. It is demonstrated that surface waves considerably affect the focusing quality at a distance of several tens of kilometers from the transmitting array. This prevents the efficient suppression of long-range reverberation by increasing the focusing depth.     

On the utilization of acoustic diffraction in monitoring cetaceans

An active acoustic technique for monitoring the whales is proposed. The technique allows one to monitor the whales’ crossing of a conventional borderline extending for several tens of kilometers in a shallow-water area. The potentialities of the technique are demonstrated in the framework of a numerical experiment by solving the problem of diffraction by model scatterers in an acoustic waveguide. The scatterers are selected in the form of soft spheroids with dimensions characteristic of various kinds of cetaceans.     

The coherence of low-frequency sound in shallow water in the presence of internal waves

The coherence time and transverse coherence length of a low-frequency (100–300 Hz) sound field that is formed by an omnidirectional point source at a distance of 10–30 km in a shallow-water acoustic waveguide, which is characteristic of an open ocean shelf, were estimated analytically and in a numerical experiment. An anisotropic field of background internal waves is considered as a source of spatiotemporal fluctuations. It is shown that the coherence time decreases as the frequency increases, and strongly depends on the perturbation-movement direction. The transverse coherence length is primarily determined by phase incursions that are related to the cylindrical shape of the acoustic-wave front. In the case of transverse propagation, background internal waves may lead to significant variations in this length. The introduction of compensating phase corrections during processing provides a considerable increase in the average transverse coherence length.     

Low-frequency bottom reverberation in shallow-water ocean regions

A phenomenological model of long-range reverberation in a shallow sea is developed to describe the statistical characteristics and interference of the sound field scattered by bottom inhomogeneities. Experimental data on the scattering of low-frequency sound by the sea bottom are presented for a shallow-water region of the Barents Sea. The results of a numerical simulation of the low-frequency bottom reverberation in a multimode waveguide are described. The simulation is based on experimentally measured values of backscattering strength.     

Sound attenuation on an ocean shelf at short ranges from a source in the presence of surface waves

The effect of surface roughness on the attenuation of low-frequency acoustic waves on a shallow ocean shelf is analyzed using numerical simulation. We focus here on transmission loss during propagation at short (less than 50 water layer depths) ranges from the sound source. The effect is considered both for a soft and hard bottom, when the sound velocity in the bottom is, respectively, lower or higher than the sound velocity in seawater. It is shown that to correctly predict losses at a short range in the presence of a rough upper boundary, it is necessary to take into account the interaction of both propagation and leaky modes. In the case of a hard bottom compared to a low-velocity one, the effect of surface roughness on propagation turned out to be the most pronounced.     

Sound Propagation in Shallow Water with an Inhomogeneous GAS-Saturated Bottom

We present the methods and results of numerical experiments studying the low-frequency sound propagation in one of the areas of the Arctic shelf with a randomly inhomogeneous gas-saturated bottom. The characteristics of the upper layer of bottom sedimentary rocks (sediments) used in calculations were obtained during a 3D seismic survey and trial drilling of the seafloor. We demonstrate the possibilities of substituting in numerical simulation a real bottom with a fluid homogeneous half-space where the effective value of the sound speed is equal to the average sound speed in the bottom, with averaging along the sound propagation path to a sediment depth of 0.6 wavelength in the bottom. An original technique is proposed for estimating the sound speed propagation in an upper inhomogeneous sediment layer. The technique is based on measurements of acoustic wave attenuation in water during waveguide propagation.