• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.39-49
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• 2019

Acoustics are increasingly regarded as a remote-sensing tool that provides the basis for classifying and mapping ocean resources including seabed classification. It has long been understood that details about the character of the seabed (roughness, sediment type, grain-size distribution, porosity, and material density) are embedded in the acoustical echoes from the seabed. This study developed a sophisticated yet easy-to-use technique to discriminate seabed characteristics using a split beam echosounder. Acoustic survey was conducted in Tongyeong waters, South Korea in June 2018, and the verification of acoustic seabed classification was made by the Van Veen grab sampler. The acoustic scattering signals extracted the seabed hardness and roughness components as well as various seabed features. The seabed features were selected using the principal component analysis, and the seabed classification was performed by the K-means clustering. As a result, three seabed types such as sand, mud, and shell were discriminated. This preliminary study presented feasible application of a sounder to classify the seabed substrates. It can be further developed for characterizing marine habitats on a variety of spatial scales and studying the ecological characteristic of fishes near the habitats.

• Journal of Advanced Research in Ocean Engineering
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.99-111
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• 2016

Seabed affected by scouring, sedimentation, and siltation occurrences often cause exposure, which induces risks to existing structures or crude oil or gas pipeline buried subsea. In order to prevent possible risks, more economical structure installation methodology is proposed in this study by predicting and managing the risk. Also, the seabed does not only consist of sandy material, but clayey soil is also widespread, and the effect of undrained shear strength should be considered, and by cyclic environmental load, pore water pressure will occur in the seabed, which reduces shear strength and allows particles to move easily. Based on previous research regarding sedimentation or erosion, the average value of external environmental loads should be applied; for scouring, a 100-year period of environmental conditions should be applied. Also, sedimentation and erosion are mainly categorized by the bed load and suspended load; also, they are calculated as the sum of bed load and suspended load, which can be obtained from the movement of particles caused by sedimentation or erosion.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.158-164
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• 1998

We introduce a statistical scheme to classify seabed from acoustic profiling data acquired using Chirp sonar system. The classification is based on grouping of signal traces by similarity index, which is computed using the K-L (Karhunen-Lo$\grave{e}$ve) transform of the Chirp profiling data. The similarity index represents the degree of coherence of bottom-reflected signals in consecutive traces, hence indicating the acoustic roughness of the seabed. The results of this study show that similarity index is a function of homogeneity, grain size of sediments and bottom hardness. The similarity index ranges from 0 to 1 for various types of seabed material. It increases in accordance with the homogeneity and softness of bottom sediments, whereas it is inversely proportional to the grain size of sediments. As a real data example, we classified the seabed off Cheju Island, Korea based on the similarity index and compared the result with side-scan sonar data and sediment samples. The comparison shows that the classification of seabed by the similarity index is in good agreement with the real sedimentary facies and can delineate acoustic response of the seabed in more detail. Therefore, this study presents an effective method for geoacoustic modeling to classify the seafloor directly from acoustic data.

• Journal of Advanced Research in Ocean Engineering
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.86-98
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• 2016

In this study, after the installation of a subsea pipeline, backfilling was performed in the trenched area. During these operations, a stability problem in the subsea pipeline occurred. The pipeline was directly impacted by environmental loading such as waves and currents that were caused by backfill material when scouring or sediment transport and siltation was carried out. Therefore, this study reviewed whether trenching was necessary, and conducted research into an indigenous seabed property that contains granular soil. A study of cohesive soil was also conducted in order to cross-correlate after calculating the values of the critical Shields parameter relevant to elements of the external environment such as waves and current, and the shear Shields parameter that depends on the actual shearing stress. In case of 1), sedimentation or erosion does not occur. In the case of 2), partial sedimentation or erosion occurs. If the case is 3), full sedimentation or erosion occurs. Therefore, in the cases of 1) or 2), problems in structural subsea pipeline stability will not occur even if partial sedimentation or erosion occurs. This should be reflected particularly in cases with granular and cohesive soil when a reduction in shear strength occurs by cyclic currents and waves. In addition, since backfilling material does not affect the original seabed shear strength, a set-up factor should be considered to use a reduced of the shear strength in the original seabed.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.95-103
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• 2013

An underwater acoustic (UWA) communication in shallow water is strongly affected by the water surface and the seabed acoustical properties. Every reflected signal to receiver experiences a time-variant scattering in sea surface roughness and a grazing-angle-dependent reflection loss in bottom. Consequently, the performance of UWA communication systems is degraded, and high-speed digital communication is disrupted. If there is a dominant signal path such as a direct path, the received signal is modeled statistically as Rice fading but if not, it is modeled as Rayleigh fading. However, it has been known to be very difficult to reproduce the statistical estimation by real experimental evaluation in the sea. To give an insight for this scattering and grazing-angle-dependent bottom reflection loss effect in UWA communication, authors conduct experiments to quantify these effects. The image is transmitted using binary frequency shift keying (BFSK) modulation. The quality of the received image is shown to be affected by water surface scattering and grazing-angle-dependent bottom reflection loss. The analysis is based on the transmitter to receiver range and the receiver depth dependent image quality and bit error rate (BER). The results show that the received image quality is highly dependent on the transmitter-receiver range and receiver depth which characterizes the channel coherence bandwidth.