Acoustic insertion loss by a bubble layer for the application to air bubble curtain and air masker

Abstract

This paper derives the insertion loss for the bubble layer of an air bubble curtain and an air masker which are used to reduce ocean anthropogenic noise such as the piling noise and the ship noise. The air bubble curtain is considered as a ‘fluid-air bubble layer-fluid’ model and the environment for the air masker is simplified as an ‘vacuum-thin plate-fluid-air bubble layer-fluid’ model. The air bubble layer in each model is assumed as the effective medium which has the complex wavenumber and the complex impedance corresponding to the bubble population distribution. The numerical simulations are performed to examine the insertion loss depending on the bubble population, the void fraction, and the thickness of the layer.