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Concept
Hydrophone
Summary
A hydrophone () is a microphone designed to be used underwater for recording or listening to underwater sound. Most hydrophones are based on a piezoelectric transducer that generates an electric potential when subjected to a pressure change, such as a sound wave.
A hydrophone can detect airborne sounds, but will be insensitive because it is designed to match the acoustic impedance of water, a denser fluid than air. Sound travels 4.3 times faster in water than in air, and a sound wave in water exerts a pressure 60 times that exerted by a wave of the same amplitude in air. Similarly, a standard microphone can be buried in the ground, or immersed in water if it is put in a waterproof container, but will give poor performance due to the similarly bad acoustic impedance match.
The first hydrophones consisted of a tube with a thin membrane covering the submerged end and the observer's ear on the other end. The design of effective hydrophones must take into account the acoustic resistance of water, which is 3750 times that of air; hence the pressure exerted by a wave of the same intensity in air is increased by a factor of 3750 in water. The American Submarine Signaling Company developed a hydrophone to detect underwater bells rung from lighthouses and lightships. The case was a thick, hollow brass disc in diameter. On one face was a thick brass diaphragm which was coupled by a short brass rod to a carbon microphone.
Early in the war, French President Raymond Poincaré provided Paul Langevin with the facilities needed to work on a method to locate submarines by the echos from sound pulses. They developed a piezoelectric hydrophone by increasing the power of the signal with a vacuum tube amplifier; the high acoustic impedance of piezoelectric materials facilitated their use as underwater transducers. The same piezoelectric plate could be vibrated by an electrical oscillator to produce the sound pulses.
The first submarine to be detected and sunk using a primitive hydrophone was the German submarine UC-3 on 23 April 1916.
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