Publications

Development of a high-fidelity simulation capability for battlefield acoustics

Aldridge, David F.; Aldridge, David F.; Symons, Neill P.

Findings are presented from the first year of a joint project between the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and the Sandia National Laboratories. The purpose of the project is to develop a finite-difference, time-domain (FDTD) capability for simulating the acoustic signals received by battlefield acoustic sensors. Many important effects, such as scattering from trees and buildings, interactions with dynamic atmospheric wind and temperature fields, and nonstationary target properties, can be accommodated by the simulation. Such a capability has much potential for mitigating the need for costly field data collection and furthering the development of robust identification and tracking algorithms. The FDTD code is based on a carefully derived set of first-order differential equations that is more general and accurate than most current sound propagation formulations. For application to three-dimensional problems of practical interest in battlefield acoustics, the code must be run on massively parallel computers. Some example computations involving sound propagation in a moving atmosphere and propagation in the presence of trees and barriers are presented.