ICA 2010 paper

In this paper, a review of several features of the acoustic vector field will be presented. The theoretical foundation for the acoustic energy flow will be used to describe the concepts of the active and reactive components of the complex acoustic intensity field. Recently established phenomenology associated with the flow of acoustic intensity near planar boundaries via the visualization of streamlines will also be discussed. Features of the complex field scattered from simple objects will be presented, along with phenomenology found in multipath environments such as channels and waveguides. Methods for validating vector field extensions of existing numerical models in the field of underwater acoustics are defined, and some specific examples of the properties of the complex field in ocean environments is provided. Methods for extracting information about the seafloor (e.g., geoacoustic inversion) are also described. Finally, a brief overview of common beamforming techniques is presented. [Work supported by the US Office of Naval Research, Code 322OA.]