CALCULATIONS FOR THE FIELD OF PLANE SOUND WAVES IN A REALISTIC ATMOSPHERE

In this paper, the general theoretic results concerning the reflection and refraction of plane sound waves in a moving stratified medium obtained in a previous work1 have been applied to calculate the sound field in a realistic atmosphere. Two distinct approaches, the analytic one and the graphic one, have been suggested to estimate the sound field in a multi-layered atmosphere where the gradients of both temperature and wind velocity are present. The analytic method gives series expressions for the WKB approximation of the field as well as the successive modifications to it. All these expressions may be used as a basis for obtaining the specific results by some further elementary calculations devoted to the profiles of the realistic atmosphere model. The graphic method gives a clear illustration of the field in a specific example which can be considered as a standard atmosphere. Both approaches enable us to simplify the calculations referred to the usual multi-layer approaches considerably.