Applied Acoustics 74 (2013) 845–849

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Applied Acoustics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apacoust

Technical Note

Acoustic emission characteristics of underwater gas jet from a horizontal

exhaust nozzle
Weiwei Xu, Zhounian Lai, Dazhuan Wu ⇑, Leqin Wang
Institute of Process Equipment, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The sound spectrum generated by steady gas jet from a submerged horizontal nozzle was experimentally
Received 4 June 2012 investigated to analyze the acoustic emission characteristics. The effects of gas velocity in the range of
Received in revised form 1 December 2012 35–140 m/s on the sound spectrum were investigated. The results indicate that increasing gas velocity
Accepted 14 December 2012
elongated and strengthened the bubbles and increased the acoustic emission. However, the noise was
Available online 14 February 2013
mainly of low frequency, the peak values of the noise level occurred below 2 kHz in all the gas velocities
considered in the tests. A theoretical model incorporating conditions after bubble detachment was devel-
Keywords:
oped to explain the experimental result. The noise prior to bubble detachment is ignored for steady gas
Bubble noise
Gas jet
flow and isothermal gas–water system. Although the comparison with the experimental results was qual-
Experiment itative, the model predictions clearly demonstrated the low-frequency characteristics of underwater gas
Underwater noise prediction jet noise.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Navigation and control of underwater vehicles usually involve
the use of high-frequency acoustic sensors in the noise [1]. Gas
jet into a liquid environment by submerged equipment commonly
occurs in marine and chemical engineering fields, and it has been
identified as a main noise source in submerged equipment [2].
The bubble flow noise generated both at the nozzle and down-
stream is dependent on the gas velocity and nozzle structure of
an underwater gas exhaust system, and it posed a serious concern
to navies and industries.
Bubble noise is created by bubble dynamics, such as bubble
growth, deformation, collapse and natural oscillation, because of
compression of the trapped gas. Acoustic emission from bubble
flow has been quantitatively studied since 1917 [3], and the natu-
ral frequency emitted by bubbles oscillating at small amplitudes
has been theoretically predicted and experimentally confirmed
[4]. Noise production is influenced by bubble-size distribution [5]
and bubble interaction [4]. Choi and Chahine [6,7] investigated
the bubble fission process and determined that multiple noises
were generated when elongated bubbles split into several smaller
sub-bubbles before the initial collapse. Brennen [8] discovered that
the noise produced during the collapse of the bubbles can be ne-
glected if the bubble is deformed significantly because the bubble
is subjected to high shear or fission; thus, it cannot achieve signif-
icant volume acceleration. In summary, bubble changes are the pri-
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 571 87952406.
E-mail address: wudazhuan@zju.edu.cn (D. Wu).
mary reason for acoustic emission, but bubble dynamics is affected
by many factors. Arndt [9,10] experimentally studied the detailed
images of bubble deformation in a vortex flow using high-speed
videos and single-image flash photography. He determined that
bubble growth rapidly stabilized at a certain radius, and the
growth rate was proportional to the free-steam velocity and the
square root of the tension. Zhang and Shoji [11] employed the
chaos theory to study the bubble mechanisms at different gas
velocities. Both the experimental results and the theoretical pre-
diction demonstrated that bubble interaction is the primary reason
for the aperiodic property of bubble departure. Cieslinski [12] used
a laser photodiode to record signals generated during gas bubble
departure from a glass nozzle submerged in distilled water. The
bubble dynamics was observed as chaotic or periodic depending
on the volume flow rate.
Based on the aforementioned studies, the noise characteristics
of a single bubble are relatively clear. Moreover, the acoustic
behavior of bubble interaction has been investigated in many re-
search investigations [13–15] focused on the prediction of the rel-
ative bubble dynamics and noise emission. The acoustics of cloud
bubbles has also been extensively studied [16,17].
Thus, for low gas volume flow rate, the acoustic emission gen-
erated by a single bubble or by bubble interactions were studied
in detail, and high velocity air–air jet were investigated thoroughly
[18]. Although high-volume gas flow rate of underwater jet is very
common in many engineering applications, relatively few studies
on high-volume gas flow rate have been conducted.
In this paper, a horizontal nozzle in a water tank was used as a
model to investigate the noise characteristics of underwater gas

0003-682X/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2012.12.003
846 W. Xu et al. / Applied Acoustics 74 (2013) 845–849
flow. The noise spectrum of high-volume gas flow of underwater
jet was investigated experimentally. For simplicity, stable air flow
was employed in the experiment. In addition, a theoretical model
for the prediction of acoustic emission generated by underwater
steady gas jet was theoretically established. The experimental re-
sults and the theoretical predictions both demonstrated that low-
frequency noise is the primary source of noise in underwater stea-
dy gas jet. In addition, low-frequency noise is mainly generated by
bubble interactions.
2. Experimental setup
A schematic of the test arrangement is shown in Fig. 1. The
noise generated by an underwater gas jet in a water tank was mea-
sured. The size of the water tank is 3 m  1.5 m  2 m, and the
water depth in the tank is 1 m. The gas is discharged from a pres-
surized gas tank, and the discharge pressure of the nozzle was con-
trolled by a pressure regulator. The nozzle used for gas jet was
placed 0.6 m below the water surface. The hydrophones used to
detect acoustic pulse signals were positioned 0.3 m from the orifice
along the horizontal direction and 0.6 m below the water surface.
Sound pressure signals were recorded continuously for 50 s using
a digital audio tape recorder. One-third octave bands and real-time
spectra were calculated simultaneously and averaged over 50 s.
The nozzle exit diameter was 10 mm (Fig. 2).
3. Experimental results
3.1. Structure of underwater gas flow
The underwater gas flow discharges through the horizontal
nozzle at different gas velocities. Fig. 3 shows that the underwater
gas jet is like a ‘‘gas bag’’ enclosed by the surrounding water. The
gas bag is composed of many small bubbles and bubble groups,
which clearly induce bubble oscillation and bubble interactions.
The Rayleigh–Plesset equation [19] shows that bubble vibration
is influenced by many variables, such as pressure inside and out-
side the bubble and the bubble equivalent diameter. The pressure
oscillation of the bubbles is believed to influence the continuous
supply of compressible gas flow into the bubble, eventually result-
ing in the bursting of the bubble [20,21]. The oscillation and frag-
mentation of the bubbles could possibly be the main underwater
noise source.
At a gas velocity of 35 m/s, bubbles formed at the nozzle and
eventually detached from the nozzle, finally interacting with the
surrounding bubbles. As is shown in Fig. 3, diameters of the bub-
Fig. 1. Schematic of the experiment.
bles were in a relatively wider range from about 5 mm to more
than 30 mm. As the gas velocity was increased to 70 m/s, the gas
bag from the nozzle became longer and stronger, bubble distribu-
tion area and bubble number became larger, and bubble interac-
tions were more obvious outside the nozzle. Increasing further
the gas velocity to 105 m/s also elongated and strengthened the
gas bag, and bubble interactions occurred near the nozzle, as well
as downstream. Larger discharge velocity and higher turbulence
intensity at the nozzle made the bubble interactions stronger,
and the bubbles tended to break up downstream.
3.2. Sound spectrum of underwater gas flow
Fig. 4 shows the sound pressure levels of underwater gas jet in
one-third octave frequency bands at different gas velocities. The
applied gas velocities were 35, 70, 105 and 140 m/s, and the gas
pressure was 0.6 MPa. The experimental results indicated that
low-frequency noise accounts for the majority of underwater jet-
ting noise. The peak noise values below 2 kHz occurred in all the
gas velocities tested. Noise above 2 kHz increased as the gas veloc-
ity increased.
4. Theoretical analyses and discussion
4.1. Noise prediction model
Fig. 3 shows that the bubbles generated by underwater gas jet
are very complex. Bubbles developed at the nozzle and then de-
parted from the nozzle. Subsequently, the detached bubbles inter-
acted with one another. Hence, in this paper, the underwater
bubble flow was summarized in two stages. The first stage includes
the bubble formation at the nozzle during which the bubble made
contact with the nozzle, as shown in Fig. 5. The second stage is
when the bubbles departed from the nozzle, as shown in Fig. 6.
The bubble flow noise characteristics in the two stages were ana-
lyzed separately.
Lighthill’s equation [22] for aerodynamic sound is expressed as
1 @ 2 sij
D2 ps  €s ¼ f_ þ D  F 
p ð1Þ
c20 @xi @xj
where ps is the sound pressure, c0 is the ambient speed of sound in
liquid, f_ is the monopole volume source, F is the force on the volume
and sij is the stress tensor.
The first term in the right hand side of the equation reflects the
mass and heat flow rates, equal to a monopole pulse volume
source. The second term in the right hand side of the equation is
 W. Xu et al. / Applied Acoustics 74 (2013) 845–849
Fig. 2. Structure of the nozzle.
the divergence of the unsteady force imposed on the bubble, and it
is similar to a dipole. The third term represents the fluid turbu-
lence, representing a quadrupole noise source. The monopole noise
is proportional to the Mach number; the dipole and quadrupole
noises are proportional to third and fifth power of the Mach num-
ber, respectively. The underwater Mach number is the ratio of gas
velocity to the sound speed underwater. Its maximum value is
0.096 in our tests with a maximum gas velocity of 140 m/s. As
the Mach number is so small that the dipole and quadrupole acous-
tics can be neglected.
Therefore, the equation for the radiated sound pressure under-
water (Eq. (1)) becomes
1 @t 2
D2 p s  €s ¼ f_
p ð2Þ
c20
The underwater acoustic radiation expression is generated by
the integral of Eq. (2); thus,
(a) 35 m/s
Fig. 3. Air discharged through underwater nozzle at different gas velocities.
847
ql @ 2 V b
ps ðr; tÞ ¼ ð3Þ
4p r @ 2 t
where Vb is the bubble volume, r is the distance between sound sig-
nal receiver and bubble center, ql is the liquid density.
The noise is generated in two stages, prior to and after bubble
detachment from nozzle. In the first stage, bubble is generated in
the nozzle as the gas jetted into the water, as shown in Fig. 5.
The radiated sound pressure during this process is expressed as
"   #
ql @2 @Pin @U in @
pðr; tÞ ¼ q þ b U in þ Pin þ ðPin U in Þ ð4Þ
4prP 0 @t 2 b @t @t @t
where qb is the heat transfer between gas and water, Uin is gas vol-
ume flow rate, Pin is the gas pressure.
As shown in Eq. (4), prior to the bubble detachment, the acous-
tic emission is generated by the heat transfer between the bubble
and the liquid and by the flow instability (mainly including the
pressure and velocity fluctuations) during the bubble formation
process. Stable flow was adopted in the experiments; an assump-
tion was made that the gas flow in the theoretical models was sta-
ble. Therefore, the noise prior to bubble detachment is ignored for
steady gas flow and isothermal gas–water system in our
experiments.
After the bubbles are detached from the nozzle, bubble interac-
tions will generate noise. In reality, the number of bubbles under-
water is very large. For convenience, only one bubble is considered
as the study object, and the other bubbles are considered as one big
bubble, as shown in Fig. 6. The multi-bubble interaction is simpli-
fied into the interaction between two bubbles.
The factors that lead to changes in the bubble volume include
the pressure surrounding the bubble, the temperature difference
between the bubble and the liquid that surrounds the bubble,
the bubble surface tension and so on. For simplicity, the surface
tension is neglected, and the bubbles underwater are considered
as special bodies. In fact, the bubbles underwater are non-spheri-
cal. The bubble volume is governed by
@2V b
¼ 4pðR2 R _ 2Þ
€ þ 2RðRÞ ð5Þ
where R(t) is the bubble radius.
Eq. (3) shows that sound pressure is related to the second deriv-
ative of the bubble volume. Therefore, Eq. (3) can be combined
(b) 70 m/s (c) 105 m/s
848 W. Xu et al. / Applied Acoustics 74 (2013) 845–849

115 The motion of bubble generated by underwater gas jet is com-

plex; thus, a simple coupled-oscillator model [4] is used to explain
110 the bubble noise data from the experiment. We assumed that the
bubbles did not get too close to one another, and the bubbles oscil-
105
lated spherically [15,23]. Manasseh et al. [4] combined many anal-
SPL dB/1µPa

100 yses to develop a more thorough model. We define

Ri(t) = Ri0  di(t), which linearizes the Navier–Stokes equation for
95 gas velocity the liquid motion between equal size bubbles [4], i.e.,
35 m/s
90 70 m/s €d1 þ bd_ 1 þ x2 d1 ¼  R0 ðbd_ 2 þ x2 d_ 2 Þ ð7Þ
0 0
105 m/s s
85 140 m/s
€d2 þ bd_ 2 þ x2 d_ 2 ¼  R0 ðbd_ 1 þ x2 d_ 1 Þ ð8Þ
80 0
s 0
2000 4000 6000 8000 10000
Frequency Hz where s is the separation between bubbles, R0 is the equivalent
spherical radius of the initial bubble, Ri(t) is the time-dependent
Fig. 4. Sound pressure levels in one-third octave frequency bands at different gas bubble radius and
velocities under 0.6 MPa.
b ¼ 4g=R0 ql þ R0 x20 =c0 ð9Þ
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
3cp0
x0 ¼ ð10Þ
ql R20
where x0 is the frequency in radians, c is the ratio of the specific
heats, p0 is the absolute liquid pressure, ql is the water density, g
is the liquid dynamic viscosity and c is the speed of sound in water.
By defining new variables n = d1  d2 and v = d1 + d2, Eqs. (7) and
(8) can be written as
   
€n þ 1  R0 bn_ þ 1  R0 x2 n ¼ 0 ð11Þ
0
s s
Fig. 5. Bubble generation in the nozzle.
   
R0 R0
v€ þ 1  bv_ þ 1  x20 v ¼ 0 ð12Þ
s s
Using Eqs. (11) and (12), the time evolution n and v can be
computed; subsequently, d1 and d2 can be obtained. Thus, the
time-dependent bubble diameter is obtained from the equation
Ri(t) = Ri0  di(t). The underwater bubble noise is calculated from
Eqs. (6)–(12) are essentially considered by Manasseh et al. [4].

4.2. Prediction results

Fig. 6. Bubble detachment from the nozzle. Fig. 7 shows the noise prediction results of 30 mm-, 20 mm-,
15 mm-, 10 mm-, 5 mm- and 3 mm-diameter bubbles, those bub-
with Eq. (5) to express the sound pressure in terms of the bubble bles are consist with the bubble generated by underwater gas jet
diameter, i.e., in Fig. 3. All the minimum distance between the outer walls of
two equal size bubble is 2 mm, and the distance between sound
ql _ 2Þ
pðr; tÞ ¼ ðR2 R
€ þ 2RðRÞ ð6Þ signal receiver and bubble center is 0.3 m. For 30 mm-, 20 mm-,
r
15 mm-, 10 mm-, 5 mm- and 3 mm-diameter bubbles, the first

140
bubble diameter 120
30mm
120 20mm
15mm 100
SPL dB

10mm
SPL dB

100 5mm 80
bubble diameter
60 30mm 158Hz, 260 Hz
80 20mm 240Hz, 396 Hz
15mm 320Hz, 514 Hz
40 10mm 500Hz, 771 Hz
60 5mm 988Hz, 1431 Hz
20
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Frequency Hz Frequency Hz
Fig. 7. Bubble noise prediction for different bubble diameter.
 W. Xu et al. / Applied Acoustics 74 (2013) 845–849
peak in the sound spectrum occurred at 158, 240, 320, 500 and
1300 Hz, and the second peaks occurred at 260, 396, 514, 771
and 1431 Hz, respectively. The peak noise of all the bubble interac-
tion concentrated mainly below 2 kHz. The peak frequencies pre-
dicted by the coupled-oscillator model were similar to the
experimental peak frequencies, which were below 2 kHz in the
one-third octave frequency, as shown in Fig. 4. Thus, it was con-
cluded that the theoretically obtained peak frequency was in good
agreement with the experimental prediction, whereas the peak
noise values were not identical. The difference in the signals can
be explained as follows. The bubble oscillation model employed
two bubbles to predict the bubble noise, but the actual gas bag
was surrounded by numerous small bubbles. In addition, the bub-
ble detachment from the nozzle and the bubble split were not ta-
ken into account.
However, the theory qualitatively predicted the experimental
data. Both the experimental data and the theoretical results indi-
cated that the acoustic emission of underwater gas jet under a con-
stant flow-rate condition is induced by the bubble interactions, and
the generated noises are primarily low-frequency noises.
5. Conclusion
Experiments conducted on the sound spectrum generated by
steady gas jet into water have revealed significant low-frequency
characteristics. This phenomenon could have been possibly gener-
ated by bubble interactions. It could also have been generated by
bubble–nozzle interaction during bubble formation at the nozzle.
The noise source must be identified.
Both the theoretical prediction and experimental results
showed that, in stable gas velocity condition, the noise generated
by underwater gas jet is mainly induced by bubble interactions,
which are mainly low-frequency noise. The theory qualitatively
predicted the experimental data. However, the comparison re-
mains qualitative, limited by the simplification in the bubble inter-
action model, as well as by the absence of detailed knowledge on
bubble bursting and bubble fission.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Weiping Dai and Zongrui Hao
for building the experimental set-up. Project supported by Funda-
mental Research Funds for the Central Universities.
849
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