Kyle Richard Jones

On infrasound generated by wind farms and its propagation in low‐altitude tropospheric waveguides

Infrasound from a 60-turbine wind farm was found to propagate to distances up to 90 km under nighttime atmospheric conditions. Four infrasound sensor arrays were deployed in central New Mexico in February 2014; three of these arrays captured infrasound from a large wind farm. The arrays were in a linear configuration oriented southeast with 13, 54, 90, and 126 km radial distance and azimuths of 166°, 119°, 113°, and 111° from the 60 1.6-MW turbine Red Mesa Wind Farm (RMWF), Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, USA. Peaks at a fundamental frequency slightly below 0.9 Hz and its harmonics characterize the spectrum of the detected infrasound. The generation of this signal is linked to the interaction of the blades, flow gradients, and the supporting tower. The production of wind-farm sound, its propagation, and detection at long distances can be related to the characteristics of the atmospheric boundary layer. First, under stable conditions, mostly occurring at night, winds are highly stratified, which enhances the production of thickness sound (TS) and the modulation of other higher-frequency wind turbine sounds. Second, nocturnal atmospheric conditions can create low-altitude waveguides (with altitudes on the order of 100s of meters) allowing long distance propagation. Third, night and early morning hours are characterized by reduced background atmospheric noise that enhances signal detectability. This work describes the characteristics of the infrasound from a quasi-continuous source with the potential for long-range propagation that could be used to monitor the lower part of the atmospheric boundary layer.

Spall effects on infrasound generation from explosions at the Nevada National Security Site

We apply two methods to evaluating the spall signature from underground chemical explosions such as those at the Source Physics Experiment (SPE) at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). The first approach uses the Rayleigh integral to compute overpressures for buried explosions from synthetic vertical acceleration data at surface ground zero. To obtain the acceleration data, we systematically vary parameters such as the spall duration, depth of burial and magnitude and observe the effect on the resulting acoustic waveform shape. The second method uses a hydrodynamic approach to more fully characterize the varied parameters to produce the acoustic waveforms. As the spall decreases we find that the acoustic waveform shape changes dramatically. This waveform signature may provide diagnostics on the explosive source and may be a useful metric for underground explosion monitoring. [This work was done under award number DE-AC52-06NA25946. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed an...