ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Physical Oceanography
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1687199
Frequency Adaptability Analysis of Typical Acoustic Propagation Models
Provisionally accepted
- The Key Laboratory of Ocean Acoustics and Sensing, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China
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Underwater acoustic propagation is influenced by water column properties, seabed topography, and 11 source frequency, with existing numerical models exhibiting varied performance across different 12 conditions. This study evaluates the frequency adaptability of three acoustic models—BELLHOP 13 (geometric ray-based), RAM (parabolic equation), and KRAKEN (coupled mode)—under diverse 14 seabed topographies, including deep-sea-flat (25–2000 Hz), shallow-sea-flat (25–10000 Hz), and 15 gentle/steep-slope seabed (25–800 Hz). Flat seabed scenarios use the Scooter model as a benchmark, 16 while sloping seabed scenarios are compared against analytical solutions. Results indicate that in a 17 200 m deep flat ocean environment, BELLHOP achieves high accuracy for frequencies above 200 18 Hz, KRAKEN performs comparably to RAM below 50 Hz, and RAM excels below 200 Hz. In a 19 4000 m deep flat ocean, RAM outperforms at frequencies below 100 Hz, while BELLHOP performs 20 well above 100 Hz. For sloping seabed environments with slopes less than 6.5°, RAM demonstrates 21 stability below 100 Hz, while BELLHOP performs better above 100 Hz; for slopes greater than 6.5°, 22 RAM remains stable below 50 Hz, with BELLHOP outperforming above 50 Hz. KRAKEN is found 23 unsuitable for sloping seabed simulations. These findings provide quantitative guidance for selecting 24 acoustic models based on frequency and seabed topography.
Keywords: frequency dependence, Seabed topography, Model performance, Acoustic Numerical models, underwater sound propagation
Received: 17 Aug 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, chen, feng, wang and wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: cheng chen, chen.cheng@nwpu.edu.cn
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