Numerical analysis of acoustic radiation efficiency of plate structures with air bubble layers

Underwater noise pollution has a significant impact on the marine environment. This study proposed a simple approach to estimate the acoustic radiation efficiency of structures with air bubble layers. The method considered the insertion loss caused by the air bubble layer through post-processing of numerical results, assuming that insertion loss is equivalent to attenuation as demonstrated by previous studies. The proposed approach was validated by comparing it with a fully coupled analysis for plate structure models. The commercial finite element program COMSOL Multiphysics was used for the acoustic-structure interaction analysis, and the acoustic characteristics of air bubble layer for the fully coupled analysis was simulated by on the Commander and Prosperetti theory. The trends indicated good agreement between the simple approach and the fully coupled analysis in terms of radiation efficiency. It is confirmed that the proposed method is providing insight into the principal mechanism of underwater noise reduction for the bubble layer on the wedge-shaped structure.