Low‐cost dipole hydrophone for use in towed arrays

The design, fabrication, and testing of a low‐cost acoustic particle velocity sensor are described. The primary design parameters for the dipole hydrophone are low‐cost, low‐mass, and small size. The sensor uses commercially available geophones to locally measure one or more components of the acoustic particle velocity field. The geophones are encapsulated in a syntactic foam to reduce their average density and hence increase their acoustic sensitivity. This method of fabrication greatly reduces costs compared to conventional methods which use machined cases. The on‐axis voltage sensitivity was measured experimentally using two methods. The first used a uniaxial vibration shaker to estimate the intrinsic velocity sensitivity of the encapsulated geophone with the case fixed to the shaker head. The second measured the in situ acoustic sensitivity in water. Theoretical models of the voltage sensitivity for these two cases are developed and the results compare very well with the experimental data. Additionally, rotator tests were performed at frequencies of 100, 500, 600, and 1000 Hz to measure the quality of the dipole directivity pattern in water. Near‐theoretical dipole patterns, with nulls better than 30 dB, were measured.