Development and Investigation of Fully Ventilated Deep Subwavelength Absorbers

Abstract

A new type of deep subwavelength acoustic metamaterial (AMM) absorber with 100% ventilation is presented in this study. The proposed ventilation absorber consists of coiled-up half-wave resonators (HWRs) and quarter-wave resonators (QWRs). First, the sound absorption and sound transmission performances for absorbers were analyzed considering the thermal viscosity dissipation. Then, the prototype with ten HWRs and three QWRs composed of acrylic plates was manufactured based on the theoretical model. The acoustic performance of the absorber was tested in an air-filled acoustic impedance tube to determine the sound absorption and transmission loss performances. Good agreement was found between the measured and theoretically predicted results. The experimental results show that the proposed ventilation AMM absorber is able to achieve sound absorption in a range between 330 Hz and 460 Hz with a thickness of only 32 mm (about 3% of the wavelength in the air). Furthermore, the sound transmission loss can achieve 17 dB from 330 Hz to 460 Hz. The main advantage of the proposed absorber is that it can be completely ventilated in duct noise control.