Date of Award


Degree Type

Honors College Thesis


Physics and Astronomy

First Advisor

Michael Vera, Ph.D.

Advisor Department

Physics and Astronomy


Equivalent fluids use complex densities in place of realistic seafloor conditions to simplify simulations of acoustic interaction with the seafloor. This eliminates the computationally intensive attempts to simulate realistic seafloor interactions that include shear waves. A previous method used such equivalent fluids and was found to be accurate only for interaction with low grazing angles and low shear speeds. The current method expands by also parameterizing the speed of sound in the fluid, allowing higher grazing angles and shear speeds to be modeled with equivalent fluids. For a particular window of grazing angle, there are several approaches to determining the complex density and the fluid's speed of sound using this Expanded Equivalent Fluid. By calculating statistics and comparing acoustic simulation results, the approach that most accurately mimics the actual seafloor and the highest window of grazing angle at which the fluid yields respectable results are investigated.