UNIFORM AND MULTI-GRID MODELING OF ACOUSTIC WAVE PROPAGATION WITH CELLULAR AUTOMATON TECHNIQUES

Abstract

The Cellular Automaton (CA) method is an alternative computational technique used in understanding the behavioral response of dynamic systems. It allows great flexibility in the application of various types of boundary conditions. As such, this method is used in developing an alternative propagation model for ocean acoustics. The modeling scheme creates a profile of propagation losses versus range, in an acoustic medium. Moreover, the chosen complex boundary conditions, which are not easily modeled by ordinary numerical techniques, are shown to perform with remarkable ease with CA methods. Accordingly, like any other modeling method, the computational time increases when a refined solution is desired. As such, an alternative multi-grid modeling scheme is shown to increase the performance time of the CA method significantly. This improvement is dependent upon the total number of global grid points inside the multi-grid domain. The end result show a multi-grid, with fewer nodal points, producing accurate results that replicate a uniform grid, which utilizes a larger quantity of nodal points.