Abstract
Underwater acoustic power should be measured in a free field, but it is not easy to implement. In practice, the measurement could be performed in a reverberant field such as a water-filled steel tank and concrete tank. In this case, the structure and the acoustic field are strongly or weakly coupled according to material properties of the steel and water. So, characteristics of the water tank must be investigated in order to get the accurate underwater acoustic power. In detail, modal frequencies, mode shapes of the structure and frequency response functions of the acoustic field could represent the characteristics of the reverberant water tank. In this paper, the structure-acoustic coupling has been investigated on a reverberant water tank numerically and experimentally. The finite element analysis has been carried out to estimate the structural and acoustical modal parameters under the dry and water-filled conditions, respectively. In order to investigate the structure-acoustic coupling effect, the numerical analysis has been performed according to the structure stiffness change of the water tank. The acoustic frequency response functions were compared with the numerical analysis and acoustic exciting test. From the results, the structural modal frequencies of the water-filled condition have been decreased compared to those of the dry condition in the low frequency range. The acoustic frequency response functions under the coupled boundary conditions showed different patterns from those under the ideal boundary conditions such as the pressure release and rigid boundary condition, respectively.