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The Use Of Multi-Beam Sonars To Image Bubbly Ship Wakes, R Lee Culver, Thomas C. Weber, David L. Bradley

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

During the past five years, researchers at Penn State University (PSU) have used upward-looking multi-beam (MB) sonar to image the bubbly wakes of surface ships. In 2000, a 19-beam, 5° beam width, 120° sector, 250 kHz MB sonar integrated into an autonomous vehicle was used to obtain a first-of-a-kind look at the three-dimensional variability of bubbles in a large ship wake. In 2001 we acquired a Reson 8101 MB sonar, which operates at 240 kHz and features 101-1.5º beams spanning a 150º sector. In July 2002, the Reson sonar was deployed looking upward from a 1.4 m diameter buoy moored …