Sound insulation performance of Helmholtz cavity with thin film bottom

Abstract

Aiming at the isolation of low-frequency noise, an acoustic metamaterial is designed based on Helmholtz cavity and thin film structure. It consists of a Helmholtz cavity with film bottom and the mass block attached to the cavity. By the finite element method, the transmission losses and resonance frequencies of metamaterials in a frequency range of 20－1200 Hz are calculated and also verified experimentally. The results show that the metamaterial has great sound insulation performance in the frequency range. There are six sound insulation peaks, of which the two sound insulation peaks below 100 Hz have the transmission losses of 44.29 dB and 67.43 dB, respectively. The maximum transmission loss in the whole frequency range is 90.18 dB. Comparing with the normal Helmholtz cavity or thin film acoustic metamaterial or traditional material, the sound insulation performance of the metamaterial is improved greatly. By analyzing the resonance and vibration mode diagram at the sound insulation peaks comprehensively, the sound insulation mechanism of the metamaterial is further explored. The results show that many resonance modes have no effect on transmission loss only when the resonance mode can be coupled with the incident wave and is not an antisymmetric mode which can affect the transmission loss. The transmission and reflection coefficient of the metamaterial are calculated by the finite element method, and through the method for retrieving effective properties, the effective mass density and effective modulus are obtained. It is found that there is a negative effective mass density at the sound insulation peak, meanwhile the effective modulus is close to zero. The generation mechanism of abnormal equivalent parameters is analyzed from the energy view point. The acoustic impedance of the metamaterial is obtained by an equivalent circuit method, through which the first resonance frequency is calculated relatively accurately. According to the results of the previous study on sound insulation mechanism, the effect of the eccentric mass unit on the sound insulation performance of metamaterial is studied. It is found that the eccentric mass can greatly reduce the antisymmetric resonance mode and increase the sound insulation peak of the structure, which is also verified experimentally. The results provide a reference for designing the acoustic metamaterials.