Engineering Commons^™

Classifying Seabed Parameters From Normal Incidence Reflections: Model Comparison And Inversion Technique, Megan Frantz

Dissertations and Theses

As of the year 2019, only about five percent of the seafloor has been topologically mapped and classified for type (e.g., sand, silt, gravel). To rapidly survey the seabed from surface ships or underwater vehicles, acoustic remote sensing methods are needed. In this thesis, acoustic measurements and inverse modeling is investigated as a way to classify seabed type based on estimating parameters such as density, sound speed, and interface roughness. The method uses normal incident acoustic measurements that can be made using either a single beam echo sounder or the normal incident beams from a side scan sonar. The inverse …