Subcritical scattering from buried elastic shells

Buried objects have been largely undetectable by traditional high-frequency sonars due to their insignificant bottom penetration. Further, even a high grazing angle sonar approach is vastly limited by the coverage rate dictated by the finite water depth, making the detection and classification of buried objects using low frequency, subcritical sonar an interesting alternative. On the other hand, such a concept would require classification clues different from the traditional high-resolution imaging and shadows to maintain low false alarm rates. A potential alternative, even for buried targets, is classification based on the acoustic signatures of man-made elastic targets. However, the elastic responses of buried and proud targets are significantly different. The objective of this work is to identify, analyze, and explain some of the effects of the sediment and the proximity of the seabed interface on the scattering of sound from completely and partially buried elastic shells. The analysis was performed using focused array processing of data from the GOATS98 experiment carried out jointly by MIT and SACLANTCEN, and a new hybrid modeling capability combining a virtual source-or wave-field superposition-approach with an exact spectral integral representation of the Green's functions for a stratified ocean waveguide, incorporating all multiple scattering between the object and the seabed. Among the principal results is the demonstration of the significant role of structural circumferential waves in converting incident, evanescent waves into backscattered body waves, emanating to the receivers at supercritical grazing angles, in effect making the target appear closer to the sonar than predicted by traditional ray theory.