2020 journal article
Low-Frequency Broadband Acoustic Metasurface Absorbing Panels
FRONTIERS IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING-SWITZERLAND, 6.
author keywords: low-frequency sound absorption; broad bandwidth; deep-subwavelength thickness; far-field coupling effect; causal optimality
open access via www.frontiersin.org (publisher PDF)
Source: Web Of Science
Added: August 16, 2021
A broadband sound absorption attained by a deep-subwavelength structure is of great interest to the noise control community especially for extremely low frequencies (20–100 Hz) in room acoustics. Coupling multiple different resonant unit cells has been an effective strategy to achieve a broadband sound absorption. In this paper, we report on an analytical, numerical and experimental study of a low-frequency broadband (50–63 Hz, one third octave band), high absorption (average absorption coefficient ≈ 93%), near-omnidirectional (0–75°) acoustic metasurface absorber composed of four coupled unit cells at a thickness of 15.4 cm (1/45 of the wavelength at 50 Hz). To further broaden the bandwidth (50–100 Hz, one octave band), a design with 19 unit cells coupled in a supercell is analytically studied to achieve an average absorption coefficient of 85% for a wide angle range (0–75°) at a thickness of 20 cm (1/34 of wavelength at 50 Hz). Two additional degrees of freedom, the lateral size of supercell and the number of unit cells in the supercell, are demonstrated to facilitate such a causally optimal design which is close to the ideally causal optimality. The proposed design methodology may solve the long-standing issue for low frequency absorption in room acoustics.