MSc Thesis on underwater noise propagation

Background

Life in our coastal regions is under large environmental pressure from many human activities one of which is underwater noise. To meet increasing demands for detailed modeling and measurements of underwater noise a more detailed understanding of how noise propagates from noise sources to the environment is needed. As part of an ongoing research project to create underwater noise maps for recreational boats IVL has measured propagation loss in the Koster Island marine protected area. These measurements show a variety of acoustic effects that are not captured by simple analytical models but require a numerical modelling approach to understand.

The project

The core of this Master thesis project is to develop a numerical acoustic propagation loss model and use it to model the measurement cases from the Koster Islands. The results of this numerical modelling should be compared with the measurements where appropriate.

The numerical model must be able to handle propagation around islands as well as a varying water depth. As such an FDTD model would be the proposed approach for the project. The core research questions are:

• How to incorporate the varying bottom profile (bathymetry) in a FDTD model
• How well can an FDTD model explain the propagation loss in this complicated acoustic environment
• How sensitive is the FDTD modelling approach to environmental parameters e.g. bottom sediment properties

Qualifications

• Good programming skills. Implementing and/or modifying numerical algorithms require a good knowledge of how to translate numerical equations into functioning code.
• Solid understanding of acoustics.

Group size: one or two students.

Place: Gothenburg.

Start date: January 2026.

Credits: 30.

IVL and our work on underwater noise

IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute is an independent non-profit research institute that employs 500 people. We work very broadly within the field of sustainable development and undertake both research projects and expert consultancy.

Underwater noise is a growing topic and currently we are six researchers in acoustics signal processing and marine biology.

The proposed masters thesis project(s) will be connected to a EU funded research project where one of the ais is to produce noise maps for recreational boating in the Koster Islands.

Contact

For questions please contact:

Carl Andersson

010-

Interested

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