Scattering from a single bubble near a roughened air-water interface: laboratory measurements and modeling

The problem of scattering from a single bubble located close to a slightly roughened, air-water interface is studied both theoretically and experimentally. Two well-controlled laboratory experiments were performed to investigate the effects of surface roughness on the scattering response of the bubble. In the first experiment, a bubble of radius 1200 microm was placed on a fine thread at a variable distance, d, from the mean-still-water level of the surface, which was roughened using a wind source. In the second experiment, a bubble of radius 800 microm was utilized, while the water surface was roughened using a plunger wave-making source. The waveheights and important characteristic length scales associated with each experiment were quantified using digital photography. The wind source produced waveheights that were represented by a Gaussian distribution, while the plunger source produced waveheights that were represented by a bimodal distribution. To model the acoustic measurements, an expression describing the four scattering paths, from source to bubble to receiver, was used. A random phase shift due to the surface roughness was added to the paths that interacted with the surface, and expectations of this phase shift were computed based on the analytical representations for the waveheight distribution. The data show good agreement with the simulations and the sensitivity of scattering from a subsurface bubble to small changes in waveheight is illustrated. The experiments highlight important parametric dependencies, which are summarized here, and the relation between monostatic and bistatic scattering is also discussed.