Frequency- and time-domain analysis of the transient resonance scattering resulting from the interaction of a sound pulse with submerged elastic shells

The authors present a resonance scattering analysis of the echoes returned by a submerged, air-filled, elastic spherical shell, and also from a rigid sphere, when they are insonified by sound pulses. They consider arbitrary pulsed incidences of any duration, carrier frequency, envelope and shape. The approach is equally effective in the frequency and the time domains. They compare backscattered echoes returned by the structures under study in various instances, which are predicted by exact modal approaches, and by the approximate Kirchhoff method. The effects of pulse duration are examined, and so are the various kinds of resonances that develop when a shell is insonified by extremely narrowband pulses. Also examined is the concept of an impulse sonar, for incident pulses that are short- and broadbanded. An inverse scattering analysis shows how and how well physical target characteristics extracted in situ from the remotely sensed echoes can be used for target identification. Various sample cases are constructed and solved and the results interpreted.<>