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DJ Tang

Senior Principal Oceanographer

Email

djtang@apl.washington.edu

Phone

206-543-1290

Biosketch

Dr. Tang research encompasses ocean bottom interacting acoustics, especially problems involving horizontal, as well as vertical, environmental variabilities; acoustic tomography of sediments; sediment conductivity; wave propagation in range-dependent waveguides; array processing; acoustic scattering by gas bubbles and man-made objects in sediments.

Department Affiliation

Acoustics

Education

B.S. Physics, University of Science and Technology, Hefei, China, 1981

M.S. Physics/Acoustics, Institute of Acoustics, Beijing, China, 1985

Ph.D. Oceanographic Engineering, MIT/WHOI, 1991

Publications

2000-present and while at APL-UW

Estimation of geoacoustic parameters and source range using airgun sounds in the East Siberian Sea, Arctic Ocean

Lee, D.H., D.G. Han, J.W. Choi, W. Son, E.J. Yang, H.S. La, and D. Tang, "Estimation of geoacoustic parameters and source range using airgun sounds in the East Siberian Sea, Arctic Ocean," 11, doi:10.3389/fmars.2024.1370294, 2024.

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17 May 2024

Dispersion is a representative property of low-frequency sound propagation over long distances in shallow-water waveguides, making dispersion curves valuable for geoacoustic inversion. This study focuses on estimating the geoacoustic parameters using the dispersion curves extracted from airgun sounds received in the East Siberian Sea. The seismic survey was conducted in September 2019 by the icebreaking research vessel R/V Araon, operated by the Korea Polar Research Institute. A single hydrophone was moored at the East Siberian Shelf, characterized by nearly range-independent shallow water (<70 m) with a hard bottom. In the spectrogram of the received sounds, the dispersion curves of the first two modes were clearly observed. Utilizing a combination of warping transform and wavelet synchrosqueezing transform these two modes were separated. Then, the geoacoustic parameters, such as sound speed and density in the sediment layer, were estimated by comparing the two modal curves extracted at a source-receiver distance of approximately 18.6 km with the predictions obtained by the KRAKEN normal-mode propagation model. Subsequently, the distances between the airgun and the receiver system in the 18.6 to 121.5 km range were estimated through the comparison between the measured modal curves and the model replicas predicted using the estimated geoacoustic parameters.

The impact of the spatial variability of the seafloor on midfrequency sound propagation during the Target and Reverberation Experiment 2013

Hefner, B.T., D. Tang, and W.S. Hodgkiss, "The impact of the spatial variability of the seafloor on midfrequency sound propagation during the Target and Reverberation Experiment 2013," IEEE J. Ocean. Eng., EOR, doi:10.1109/JOE.2024.3361968, 2024.

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14 Mar 2024

To support the modeling of reverberation data collected during the Target and Reverberation Experiment in 2013 (TREX13), transmission loss was measured in the 1.5–4.0 kHz band using a towed source and two moored vertical line arrays. The experiment site was located off the coast of Panama City Beach, FL, and the transmission loss measurements took place along a 7-km-long isobath, which ran parallel to the shore with a water depth of approximately 19 m. The seafloor at the TREX13 site consists of sand ridges, which run perpendicular to the track of the experiment, with narrow bands of softer sediments on the western sides of the ridges and in the ridge swales. Using data from a multibeam echosounder survey and direct measurements of the seafloor properties, a geoacoustic description of the seafloor is developed and used to model the transmission loss at the site. Although the soft-sediment bands only occur in 27% of the seafloor, they are found to have a significant impact on the transmission loss, increasing it by roughly 5 dB at 4 km over what would be expected from an entirely sand sediment. This is consistent with the previous work by Holland who showed that lossiest sediments play the largest role in propagation over range-dependent seabeds. Simulations also show that the exact locations of the soft sediments are less important for controlling propagation in the TREX13 environment than the proportions of the sediments. This suggests that a range-independent, effective media description of the sediment could be used to model propagation at the site. The limits of the use of an effective medium in describing both propagation and reverberation measurements made during TREX13 are considered.

Subsurface acoustic ducts in the Northern California current system

Xu, G., R.R. Harcourt, D. Tang, B.T. Hefner, E.I. Thorsos, and J.B. Mickett, "Subsurface acoustic ducts in the Northern California current system," J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 155, 1881-1894, doi:10.1121/10.0024146, 2024.

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7 Mar 2024

This study investigates the subsurface sound channel or acoustic duct that appears seasonally along the U.S. Pacific Northwest coast below the surface mixed layer. The duct has a significant impact on sound propagation at mid-frequencies by trapping sound energy and reducing transmission loss within the channel. A survey of the sound-speed profiles obtained from archived mooring and glider observations reveals that the duct is more prevalent in summer to fall than in winter to spring and offshore of the shelf break than over the shelf. The occurrence of the subsurface duct is typically associated with the presence of a strong halocline and a reduced thermocline or temperature inversion. Furthermore, the duct observed over the shelf slope corresponds to a vertically sheared along-slope velocity profile, characterized by equatorward near-surface flow overlaying poleward subsurface flow. Two potential duct formation mechanisms are examined in this study, which are seasonal surface heat exchange and baroclinic advection of distinct water masses. The former mechanism regulates the formation of a downward-refracting sound-speed gradient that caps the duct near the sea surface, while the latter contributes to the formation of an upward-refracting sound-speed gradient that defines the duct's lower boundary.

More Publications

Acoustics Air-Sea Interaction & Remote Sensing Center for Environmental & Information Systems Center for Industrial & Medical Ultrasound Electronic & Photonic Systems Ocean Engineering Ocean Physics Polar Science Center
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