Bidimensional Ray Tracing Model for the Underwater Noise Propagation Prediction

An increasing attention has recently been paid to the effect of the underwater noise field generated by ship activities on the marine environment. Although this problem is widely discussed in international treaties and conventions, it has not yet found a consolidated technical-scientific treatment capable of quantifying the level of underwater noise emissions produced by naval systems. As part of a national research collaboration, a novel code has been developed to predict noise propagation according to the Ray Tracing approach. Such optical geometry-based technique allows for calculating the Transmission Loss (TL) trend in its respective contributions: geometrical loss (due to the distance between the source and receiver), dissipation loss (due to the characteristics of the propagation environment), and reflection loss (due to the surfaces that delimit the field). The simulation requires as input parameters the source info as spatial position, frequency, and sound pressure level (SPL) as well as the sea properties like seabed depth, the speed of sound profile, the layers thickness the water column is divided into, the sea salinity, temperature, and pH. The simulation code provides the SPL spatial distribution useful as a fast industrial tool in the future studies addressed to identify the emission limits for the protection of marine wildlife.