Ventilated noise-insulating metamaterials inspired by sonic black holes

Abstract: Acoustic black holes represent a special class of metastructures allowing efficient absorption based on the slow sound principle. The decrease of the wave speed is associated with the spatial variation of acoustic impedance, while the absorption properties are linked to thermoviscous losses induced by the local resonances of the structure. While most of the developments in the field of sonic black holes are dedicated to one-dimensional structures, the current study is concerned with their two-dimensional counterparts. It is shown that the change of the dimensionality results in the change of noise insulation mechanism, which relies on the opening of band-gaps rather then thermoviscous losses. The formation of band-gaps is associated with the strong coupling between the resonators constituting the considered structures. Numerically and experimentally it is shown than the structure is characterized by broad stop-bands in transmission spectra, while the air flow propagation is still allowed. In particular, a realistic application scenario is considered, in which the acoustic noise and the air flow are generated by a fan embedded into a ventilation duct. The obtained results pave the way towards the development of next-level ventilated metamaterials for efficient noise control.