FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF HONEYCOMB MEMBRANE-TYPE ACOUSTIC METAMATERIAL.

In this paper, a honeycomb membrane-type acoustic metamaterial made of a honeycomb structure with embedded membrane layers is investigated using the finite element method. This lightweight material presents excellent transmission loss (TL) at low frequency. Honeycomb structures with two and three embedded membrane layers are analyzed numerically and the effects of the number of membrane layers and of the thickness of the air gap between membranes are illustrated. Also, the influences of the membrane material properties and thickness on the TL and displacement magnitude and mode shape at different frequencies are presented. It is shown that the TL increases over a large frequency band when the honeycomb cell size decreases while the displacement magnitude of the membrane is reduced and the mode shape is affected. It is observed that the TL presents multiple resonant peaks as the thickness of the membranes is reduced. An improvement of the TL is observed around the anti-resonant frequencies by increasing the damping loss factor of the membrane, which causes a reduction of the resonant displacement magnitude and TL peaks amplitude. The investigated metamaterial can be useful in many noise control engineering applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]