Investigation of the spatial correlations of flow noise in vector hydrophone towed linear array

Following the wall pressure spectrum of the turbulent boundary layer developed by Corcos, a method in the frequency-wavenumber space was presented to analyze the flow noise in the vector hydrophone towed linear array. The general forms of the acoustic pressure and particle velocity in the flow noise field were obtained, and the spatial correlations of the flow noise were calculated. The numerical analysis results based on wavenumber integration show that: (1) The spatial correlations of flow noise drops rapidly with increasing axial separation between the elements, so the flow noise received by different vector hydrophones usually sampled in a half-wavelength rate can be considered as independent; (2) The flow noise is highly correlated in the radial direction at low frequency, and only those of high frequency componet can be neglected.