LAUSR

Abstract The far-field acoustic radiation of a cylindrical shell with finite length submerged at finite depth from the water surface is studied. Two steps are utilized to solve the problem. The first step is to determine the vibration response of the submerged cylindrical shell by using an analytical method and the second one is to determine the far field sound radiation with the boundary element method. To address the vibration responses of the shell analytically, the cylindrical shell and surrounding fluid are described by the Flugge shell equations and Laplace equation in the cylindrical coordinate system respectively. The free surface effect is taken into consideration by using the image method and the Graf's addition theorem. The reliability and efficiency of the present method are validated by comparison with the finite element method. Then, based on the vibration responses of the shell obtained from the first step, the far-field sound pressure is computed by using the boundary element method. It is found that the vibration of the cylindrical shell submerged at finite depth from the free surface tends to be the same as that in infinite fluid when the submerged depth exceeds a certain value. The frequency and the submerged depth have crucial effects on the fluctuation of the far-field sound pressure, while for the curve of sound pressure level versus immersion depth, the ratio of the distance between the adjacent peak points of sound pressure to the wavelength is independent of the frequency. Moreover, the petal number of the directivity of the far-field sound pressure increases with the increase of the frequency and the submerged depth. The work provides more understanding on the vibration and acoustic radiation behavior of a finite cylindrical shell submerged at finite depth.