Acoustic estimation of suspended sediment concentration

In this paper, the acoustic estimation of suspended sediment concentration is discussed and two estimation methods of suspended sediment concentration are presented. The first method is curve fitting method, in which, according to the acoustic backscattering theory we assume that the fitting factor K-1(r) between the concentration M(r) obtained by acoustic observation and the concentration M-0(r) obtained by sampling water is a high order power function of distance r. Using least-square algorithm, we can determine the coefficients of the high order power function by minimizing the difference between M(r) and M-0(r) in the whole water profile. To the absorption coefficient of sound due to the suspension in water we do not give constraint in the first method. The second method is recursive fitting method, in which we take M-0(r) as the conditions of initialization and decision and give rational constraints to some parameters. The recursive process is stable. We analyzed the two methods with a lot of experimental data. The analytical results show that the estimate error of the first method is less than that of the second method and the latter can not only estimate the concentration of suspended sediment but also give the absorption coefficient of sound. Good results have been obtained with the two methods.