College of Engineering Department of Ocean Engineering

Acoustic Tank

In the Middleton Building on the Narragansett Bay Campus, the department maintains and operates an acoustics test facility that is 4 m wide, 7.6 m long, and 3.6 m deep. It has two towers, with manual control in the horizontal direction and electrical control in the vertical. The towers can be rotated about the vertical axis with an accuracy of one degree. A third carriage, which is independent of the towers, is mounted on a separate track. A computer data acquisition system processes the data. The tank is filled with fresh water, which is cleansed by a standard filtration system. This facility has been used for extensive experiments including beam pattern measurements of acoustic transducers and arrays, studies of acoustic parametric sources, and the development of subbottom profiling sonar systems and underwater diver communication systems.