Using the concepts of slow sound and critical coupling, an ultra-thin acoustic metamaterial panel for perfect and quasi-omnidirectional absorption is theoretically and experimentally conceived in this work. The system is made of a rigid panel with a periodic distribution of thin closed slits, the upper wall of which is loaded by Helmholtz Resonators (HRs). The presence of resonators produces a slow sound propagation shifting the resonance frequency of the slit to the deep sub-wavelength regime ( λ/88). By controlling the geometry of the slit and the HRs, the intrinsic visco-thermal losses can be tuned in order to exactly compensate the energy leakage of the system and fulfill the critical coupling condition to create the perfect absorption of sound in a large range of incidence angles due to the deep subwavelength behavior.

/pdf/ultra-thin-metamaterial-for-perfect-and-quasi-oejyan79mb.pdf

Ultra-thin metamaterial for perfect and quasi-omnidirectional sound absorption

Perfect, broadband and asymmetric sound absorption is theoretically, numerically and experimentally reported by using subwavelength thickness panels in a transmission problem. The panels are composed of a periodic array of varying crosssection waveguides, each of them being loaded by Helmholtz resonators (HRs) with graded dimensions. The low cut-off frequency of the absorption band is fixed by the resonance frequency of the deepest HR, that reduces drastically the transmission. The preceding HR is designed with a slightly higher resonance frequency with a geometry that allows the impedance matching to the surrounding medium. Therefore, reflection vanishes and the structure is critically coupled. This results in perfect sound absorption at a single frequency. We report perfect absorption at 300 Hz for a structure whose thickness is 40 times smaller than the wavelength. Moreover, this process is repeated by adding HRs to the waveguide, each of them with a higher resonance frequency than the preceding one. Using this frequency cascade effect, we report quasi-perfect sound absorption over almost two frequency octaves ranging from 300 to 1000 Hz for a panel composed of 9 resonators with a total thickness of 11 cm, i.e., 10 times smaller than the wavelength at 300 Hz.

/pdf/rainbow-trapping-absorbers-broadband-perfect-and-asymmetric-11s15nprwd.pdf

Rainbow-trapping absorbers: Broadband, perfect and asymmetric sound absorption by subwavelength panels for transmission problems

Perfect absorption is an interdisciplinary topic with a large number of applications, the challenge of which consists of broadening its inherently narrow frequency-band performance. We experimentally and analytically report perfect and broadband absorption for audible sound, by the mechanism of critical coupling, with a sub-wavelength multi-resonant scatterer (SMRS) made of a plate-resonator/closed waveguide structure. In order to introduce the role of the key parameters, we first present the case of a single resonant scatterer (SRS) made of a Helmholtz resonator/closed waveguide structure. In both cases the controlled balance between the energy leakage of the several resonances and the inherent losses of the system leads to perfect absorption peaks. In the case of the SMRS we show that systems with large inherent losses can be critically coupled using resonances with large leakage. In particular, we show that in the SMRS system, with a thickness of λ/12 and diameter of λ/7, several perfect absorption peaks overlap to produce absorption bigger than 93% for frequencies that extend over a factor of 2 in audible frequencies. The reported concepts and methodology provide guidelines for the design of broadband perfect absorbers which could contribute to solve the major issue of noise reduction.

Perfect and broadband acoustic absorption by critically coupled sub-wavelength resonators

Using the concepts of slow sound and of critical coupling, an ultra-thin acoustic metamaterial panel for perfect and omnidirectional absorption is theoretically and experimentally conceived in this work. The system is made of a rigid panel with a periodic distribution of thin closed slits, the upper wall of which is loaded by Helmholtz Resonators (HRs). The presence of resonators produces a slow sound propagation shifting the resonance frequency of the slit to the deep sub-wavelength regime ($\lambda/88$). By controlling the geometry of the slit and the HRs, the intrinsic visco-thermal losses can be tuned in order to exactly compensate the energy leakage of the system and fulfill the critical coupling condition to create the perfect absorption of sound in a large range of incidence angles due to the deep subwavelength behavior.

/pdf/ultra-thin-metamaterial-for-perfect-and-omnidirectional-5b12ojoquw.pdf

Ultra-thin metamaterial for perfect and omnidirectional sound absorption

We experimentally report perfect acoustic absorption through the interplay of the inherent losses and transparent modes with high Q factor. These modes are generated in a two-port, one-dimensional waveguide, which is side-loaded by isolated resonators of moderate Q factor. In symmetric structures, we show that in the presence of small inherent losses, these modes lead to coherent perfect absorption associated with one-sided absorption slightly larger than 0.5. In asymmetric structures, near perfect one-sided absorption is possible (96%) with a deep sub-wavelength sample ( λ/28, where λ is the wavelength of the sound wave in the air). The control of strong absorption by the proper tuning of the radiation leakage of few resonators with weak losses will open possibilities in various wave-control devices.

Control of acoustic absorption in one-dimensional scattering by resonant scatterers

We investigate the sound propagation in an air-filled tube periodically loaded with Helmholtz resonators. By tuning the Helmholtz with the Bragg resonance, we study the efficiency of slow sound propagation in the presence of the intrinsic viscothermal losses of the system. While in the lossless case the overlapping of the resonances results in slow sound induced transparency of a narrow frequency band surrounded by a strong and broadband gap, the inclusion of the unavoidable losses imposes limits to the slowdown factor and the maximum transmission. Experiments, theory and finite element simulations have been used for the characterization of acoustic wave propagation. Experiments, in good agreement with the lossy theory, reveal the possibility of slowing sound at low frequencies by 20 times. A trade-off among the relevant parameters (delay time, maximum transmission, bandwidth) as a function of the tuning between Bragg and Helmholtz resonance frequency is also presented.

O. Richoux

Papers

Slow sound propagation in lossy locally resonant periodic structures