Department of Ocean Engineering, University of Rhode Island – Acoustic Tank

Description

The University of Rhode Island (URI) operates the Acoustic Test Tank in the Department of Ocean Engineering (OCE). Located at the Narragansett Bay Campus , the acoustic tank is 7.5 m long, 4 m wide, 3.3. m deep used for experimentation with hydrophones, underwater camera calibrations, and autonomous and remote operated marine robotics testing. The tank has an electronics and computer station for signal processing and data acquisition and also a gantry system above it with two rotating positioning towers. The tank can be used in testing acoustic transducers involved in marine renewable energy projects in order to study underwater noise generated by wave or tidal energy devices during construction and/or operation. Additionally, OCE has a number of systems that have been used to study the impact of construction noise on the marine environment:

1. Six Ocean Bottom Seismometers (OBX), which measure acoustic particle velocity in three mutually perpendicular directions in addition to acoustic pressure, are available. OBX sensor packages are self-contained units and they can be mechanically connected to a bottom mooring and acoustic releases for efficient deployment/recovery. URI currently has four OBX units;
2. The URI Geosled consists of a tetrahedral array of hydrophones with a spacing of 0.5 m. The system includes a data acquisition system. In addition to the hydrophone array, geophone arrays can be deployed attached to the geosled. These devices can be calibrated in the acoustic tank.

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Point of Contact:
Reza Hashemi – reza_hashemi@uri.edu