Measurement and Modeling of the Debye Effect in Hydroacoustics

Since submarines operate in an ionic seawater environment, there exists the possibility that any of several recognized electro-kinetic mechanisms may be excited and produce potentially detectable electromagnetic fields. Of particular focus in the proposed effort is the electroacoustic mechanism known as the Debye effect which describes the electric potential that develops when ions are displaced by passage of an acoustic wave. The proposed effort combines both experimental and theoretical methods to quantify the electromagnetic signature produced by an acoustic wave propagating through seawater in the vicinity of an undersea vehicle. These methods will review, formulate and implement physics modeling procedures to characterize the electromagnetic source associated with an acoustic wave via the Debye effect mechanism. This characterization will be combined with efficient, fast boundary element algorithms to evaluate the long range field intensity resulting from the integrated source distributions. In Phase I these methods will be used to establish whether the acoustic-induced electromagnetic field is detectable and, if so, the configurations, acoustic illuminations and frequency ranges where this field strength is most likely maximized. This information will be used to design the Phase II research and development effort concerned with developing prototype sensor hardware and refining the electro-acoustic detection algorithms.