Perturbation in the Atmospheric Acoustic Field from a Large Offshore Wind Farm in the Presence of Surface Gravity Waves

In this study a quantitatively reliable approximation of atmospheric sound wave propagation is given in the presence of a large wind farm. Rough sea surface is used as lower boundary condition at the sea surface, and an acoustic point source located at the left corner of computational domain is used to generate cylindrical symmetric sound waves. A stable finite difference approach is applied to achieve high–resolution and accurate results while maintaining efficiency of computations. A series of test cases is conducted to demonstrate the variability of acoustic wave field when accounting the effects of surface gravity waves and wind farm. Although results provide good insights into the sound wave structure in this complex waveguide, they suggest that there are some important physical processes such as range–dependent structure of sound speed and turbulence that should be included into the modeling procedure.