Confined space acoustic studies in Weymouth Fore River

An acoustic propagation study with two moving sources and three receiver positions was conducted in May 2018 in Weymouth Fore River, Massachusetts. Detailed bathymetric and geometric boundary information was previously collected. The data show strong inter-ping variability at ping rates of four Hz and one Hz. Signals were linear sweeps from 8-16 kHz and 21-34 kHz. The variation of the matched-filter envelope output, thought to be robust to phase alterations from small movements, was highly variable. This implies interfering multipath surpassing slowly varying response to boundary-interaction changes for the slowly varying source. The signatures of boundary interaction in models are compared to data to evaluate modeling procedures in the BELLHOP3D program. Interactions with concrete boundaries and steel ship and barge hulls are included in the analysis.