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Originally Posted by Nexus7
So basically the question is, is the stealth factor somehow mathematically predictable, given the values sound speed, distance, sonar capability and such? :hmm:
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It is possible to model the performance of sonar. If you want to really get down into it, read
Computational Ocean Acoustics. It's pretty heavy if you're not an advanced undergraduate in physics, at least, though. Penn State has a really good program for underwater acoustics and the Navy works with them a lot. They also do a lot of stuff like that at the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University. NATO has a research facility in Italy where they do that too. The simplest sonar model is just a ray trace, using Snell's Law, like you learn in highschool physics. You could make one in Excel. The most advanced numerically solve for the normal modes of the wave equation.
The proliferation of powerful computers has made underwater acoustics modeling fairly widespread where ever people are using sonar of any kind, including fish finders, salvaging, and hunting for oil. How good the models are depends a lot on how well understood the oceanography is in a given area, though. There's always some uncertainty in their predictions, which might be quite a lot. Sometimes, I think it's almost more important to understand the uncertainty in these computer models than it is to understand their results. But... I digress...
As far as what the Navy does specifically with all of these computer models... I'm not sure I can tell you much. This is sort of one of my favorite topics, though. :-)