A low frequency acoustic insulator by using the acoustic metasurface to a

Helmholtz resonator
Xiang Zhao, Li Cai, Dianlong Yu, Zhimiao Lu, and Jihong Wen

Citation: AIP Advances 7, 065211 (2017); doi: 10.1063/1.4989819

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4989819
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/adv/7/6
Published by the American Institute of Physics

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 AIP ADVANCES 7, 065211 (2017)

A low frequency acoustic insulator by using the acoustic

metasurface to a Helmholtz resonator
Xiang Zhao,1 Li Cai,1,a Dianlong Yu,1 Zhimiao Lu,1 and Jihong Wen1,b
1 College
of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, and Laboratory of Science
and Technology on Integrated Logistics Support, National University of Defense
Technology, Changsha 410073, China
(Received 10 April 2017; accepted 12 June 2017; published online 21 June 2017)

Acoustic metasurfaces (AMSs) are able to manipulate wavefronts at an anomalous

angle through a subwavelength layer. Their application provide a new way to control
sound waves in addition to traditional materials. In this work, we introduced the AMS
into the design of a Helmholtz resonator (HR) and studied the acoustic transmission
through the modified HR in a pipe with one branch. The variation of sound insulation
capacity with the phase gradient of the AMS was studied, and the results show that the
AMS can remarkably lower the frequency band of the sound insulation without increas-
ing the size. Our investigation provides a new degree of freedom for acoustic control
with a Helmholtz resonator, which is of great significance in acoustic metasurface the-
ory and sound insulation design. © 2017 Author(s). All article content, except where
otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4989819]

Helmholtz resonators (HRs) are common structures in pipe sound insulation and are often used
as the basis for complex acoustic systems. The history of HRs can be traced back to ancient Greece.1
Essentially, the HR consists of a cavity and one or several narrow tubes connected to the outside.
Because of its ability to absorb sound waves of a particular frequency, which is referred to as its
resonance frequency, HRs are widely used in reverberant spaces such as churches, mufflers in
pipelines, and in many other applications.2–4 However, the frequency band of HR must be adjusted to
meet the specific work conditions. The typical method used to reduce the frequency is to increase the
volume of the cavity or to increase the length of the tube. Either method always leads to an increase in
the overall size of the structure or an increase in the acoustic resistance. There are also some reports
of the active control of the HR resonant frequency; however, they are typically complex in structure
and short in stability.5–10
Acoustic metasurfaces (AMSs) can control the sound wave with a single layer, which provides
the thinnest method for acoustic manipulation. Recent reports in the field demonstrate a variety of
AMS architectures and potential applications.11–18 Mei et al. provided an AMS composed of period-
ically repeated supercells filled with inert gases, and this AMS matches the impedance of air.12 Tian
et al. introduced pentamode metamaterials into the design of an AMS and presented a broadband and
highly transparent AMS.13 Ding et al. presented an AMS composed of double-split hollow sphere
resonator arrays, which achieved anomalous reflection and negative reflection.14 The applications
of AMSs include sound beam generators,19 acoustic cloaks,15,20 acoustic diodes17,18 and acoustic
absorbers.21 AMSs have shown excellent sound control capability and an amazingly small thickness.
In this paper, we introduce an AMS into the cavity of an HR and design a thin layer AMS on the cavity
back wall of the HR. Then, we achieve a phase gradient effect on the sound insulation performance of
the HR. The results show that, with the AMS, the HR could vary its resonance frequency by changing
the phase gradient instead of the geometric dimension. By properly adjusting the phase gradient, an
acceptable sound insulation effect could be obtained in the low-frequency band.

a
Electronic addresses for corresponding author: cailiyunnan@163.com.
b
Electronic addresses for corresponding author: wenjihong nudt1@vip.sina.com.

2158-3226/2017/7(6)/065211/7 7, 065211-1 © Author(s) 2017

065211-2 Zhao et al. AIP Advances 7, 065211 (2017)

As shown in Fig. 1(a), an HR was attached to a square pipe. An AMS was added on the back wall
of the HR. An acoustic moved from left to right in the pipe. The propagation of waves in the HR is indi-
cated by the blue arrow A, red arrow B and green arrows C in Fig. 1(a). The transported wave would
be damped by the resonant wave from the short tube of HR. Fig. 1(b) shows the geometric dimensions
of the HR. The width of cavity W was 1m, and the height of the cavity H was 0.5m. For the narrow
tube, the width d 0 was 0.2m, and the length l0 was 0.1m. The thickness of the AMS h was set to 0.1m.
The AMS consisted of equally wide slits with different sound speeds. The theoretical sound
speed was symmetrical about the center of the resonant cavity, as shown in Fig. 1(c). This creates
a symmetrical phase gradient so that the sound wave is reflected to the sidewalls. The AMS can be
achieved using an air impedance-matched structure composed of thin slits filled with inert gases, as
shown in Fig. 1(d). There were 10 slits in the plat, and each was filled with two gases, so that the
effective sound speed of the slits can meet the requirements of the curve in Fig. 1(c). As a result of
the precise height ratio gradient between the argon and xenon gases, each slit achieves a different
sound speed but the same impedance as that of the air.12,18 The effective sound speed of one slit can
be expressed as
1 1 1
= RArg + RXen , (1)
c cArg cXen
where cArg and cXen are the sound speed in argon and xenon gases, and RArg = hArg /h and RXen
= hXen /h are the height ratios of the two gases, respectively. According to the geometrical relationship,
the height ratios satisfy RArg + RXen = 1. By adjusting the sound speed of the slits, the phase gradient
of reflection wave can be controlled.
The AMS reflects the wave following the generalized Snells law12–14,16–26
dΦ
(sin θ r − sin θ i )k0 = , (2)
dx

FIG. 1. The designed structure of HR with an AMS. (a) The acoustic model of the proposed structure. The arrows A, B and C
describe the manipulation effects of the AMS in HR. (b) The geometric structure of HR. (c) The theoretical continuous sound
speed gradient (black dashed line) and the discrete sound speed gradient (red real line) provided by AMS. (d) The structure
of AMS with inert gases.
065211-3 Zhao et al. AIP Advances 7, 065211 (2017)

where θ i and θ r are the angle of incidence and reflection, k 0 is the wave number of the incident
medium, and dΦ/dx is the phase gradient of the reflection wave along the surface. As long as θ i = 0◦ ,
the phase gradient is only related to the reflection angle θ r . We can manipulate the phase gradient to
control the reflection angle.
To analyze the performance of the proposed structure, the finite element method based on COM-
SOL Multiphysics was used for the numerical simulations. Fig. 2 demonstrates the sound transmission
loss in the 2D waveguide for five different phase gradients, which were described by reflection angles
when θ i was 0◦ . The different phase gradients were achieved by varying the sound speed distribution
in the slits. Moreover, the gases had an impedance similar to air to achieve the impedance-matching
condition.
As shown in Fig. 2, the sound transmission loss curves were significantly different as there was
a variation of phase gradient. The peak of sound insulation appears at f p = 58.5 Hz without the AMS,
as shown by the black dashed line, and the maximum sound transmission loss was TLmax = 32.86 dB.
As an AMS with θ r = 10◦ was introduced, f p , as indicated in Fig. 2, was approximately 48 Hz,
and an obvious decrease in the insolation frequency band was observed, and TLmax decreased to
approximately 11.5 dB. As the phase gradient of the AMS increased to θ r = 20◦ , f p continued to drop
to 37 Hz while TLmax increased to 20 dB. A smaller f p was found when a greater phase gradient
θ r = 60◦ was used, f p was 25 Hz and TLmax was 25.76 dB. However, after this, the peak of the sound
insulation changes very little as the phase gradient continued to increase. When θ r = 90◦ , f p was only
reduced by 1.5 Hz, and TLmax was the same as when θ r = 60◦ .
To analyze the principle of the variance in the sound insulation characteristics, we sweep the phase
gradient to drive θ r from 0 to 90◦ on the FEM platform, and the results are illustrated in Fig. 3. Fig. 3(a)
shows the variation of TLmax with θ r . From the blue curve it can be seen that TLmax reduces to a
valley at θ r = 12◦ and returns to a steady value after θ r = 24◦ . This is because the wave turns 11.3◦
as it passes from the center of the AMS to the boundary of short tube and achieves the maximum
number of reflections to exit the cavity at approximately θ r = 12◦ . Fig. 3(b) shows the variation of f p
with θ r . As the blue curve shows, there is an inverse relationship between f p and θ r . The red dotted
line in Fig. 3(b) shows the fitted inverse curve of the relationship between the effective acoustic
compliance of the structure with the geometric size of the cavity and the phase gradient of the AMS
in Eq. (6).
The geometry of the Helmholtz resonator is much smaller than the functional wavelength, and
an equivalent model can be created using the lumped parameter model. For our module (as shown
in Fig. 1(a)), the short tube is equivalent to the acoustic mass, the cavity is equivalent to the acoustic
compliance, and the acoustic resistance includes both the friction between the air and the tube wall
and the radiation resistance when sound passes from the tube into the cavity. Therefore, we obtain

FIG. 2. The relationship between the sound insulation and frequency in five different θr . The peak of sound insulation moved
to the low frequency as the phase gradient of AMS increasing.
065211-4 Zhao et al. AIP Advances 7, 065211 (2017)

FIG. 3. The variation of the peak of sound insulation with θr : (a) the sound insulation; (b) the resonant frequency. The blue
solid line is the simulation results. The red dashed line is the fitting curve given by the Eq. (6).

the impedance equation of the Helmholtz resonator 3,4,6,8–10

!
1
Za = Ra − i ωMa − , (3)
ωCa

where the acoustic mass Ma = ρ0 l/S, the acoustic compliance Ca = V/(ρ0 c0 2 ) (ρ0 and c0 represent
the density and the sound speed of the gas in the HR, and l, S and V represent the corrected length
of the tube, the cross section of the tube and the volume of the cavity, respectively). Ra is related to
the thickness of the short tube and the viscosity of the gas. The resonance frequency can be obtained
using Eq. (4), as3,4,10
s
1 c S
fm = √ = . (4)
2π Ma Ca 2π lV0

Since the geometric dimension l0 < d0 , the equivalent dimension in Eq. (4) need to be corrected.
Because Ra has no effect on the resonance frequency of the Helmholtz resonator, it can be ignored
when analyzing the resonance frequency. From Eq. (4), it is necessary to adjust the compliance
and mass to change the resonance frequency of the Helmholtz resonator. The typical method is to
increase the volume of the cavity or to extend the length of the short tube. However, by introducing
the metasurface into the Helmholtz resonator, the sound field distribution in the cavity is changed.
From another point of view, the metasurface extends the propagation path of the sound waves in the
cavity. As a result, the effective compliance is increased, which causes a decrease in the resonance
frequency. The equation of the effective compliance is obtained as Eq. (5) by curve fitting, as shown
in Fig. 3(b).
065211-5 Zhao et al. AIP Advances 7, 065211 (2017)

2W2
Ca0 = (1 +
sin θ r )Ca , (5)
V0
where W and V 0 represent the width and volume of the cavity, respectively, as shown in Fig. 1(b).
Eq. (5) indicates the relationship between the effective acoustic compliance and the phase gradient
of the AMS. The application of the AMS is equivalent to the addition of a volume of 2W · W sin θ r .
According to Eq. (4) and Eq. (5), the resonance frequency of the Helmholtz resonator with the
AMS is
f0
fm = s !, (6)
2W 2
sin θ r + 1
V0
where f 0 is the resonance frequency of the Helmholtz resonator with the same geometric dimensions
but without the AMS.
By introducting a AMS to the HR, we got a novel low-frequency acoustic insulator which
acted better than the conventional HR. With the help of AMS, the resonant frequency of the HR
was obtained at much lower frequency without change the size, and more than 25 dB transmission
loss was obtained. It can be infer that the role of the AMS in the cavity was to manipulate the
sound field distribution. As a comparison, we used a perfect matched layer (PML) to replace the
AMS in the model, which acted as a ideal perfect absorbing meterial, also can improve the sound
insulation effect, but didn’t change the sound field like the AMS. The result shows that it works in
a wide frequency band from 17 Hz to 70 Hz, but the sound transmission loss is no more than 7 dB
in the whole band. The manipulation of the sound field by AMS means a larger volume is used
to insulate the sound, which leads to a better insulation effect than absorption, especially in low
frequency.
The micro-perforated panel (MPP) is a porous sound absorption structure that can be seen as par-
allel HRs, where the micro hole is equivalent to the narrow tube of the HR.4 To demonstrate the effect
of the HR with an AMS, we applied this structure to the back wall of the MPP, as shown in Fig. 4.
In the model of the MPP, the area porosity σ = 0.2, and the plate thickness t p = 0.1 m. The size of
cavity was the same as in the HR introduced above. Thanks to the damping effect of micro hole, the
input wave is As shown in Fig. 5, the absorption peak of the MPP with the AMS (the black solid line)
appears at 9 Hz, while the absorption peak of the MPP without the AMS (the red dashed line) occurs
at 50 Hz. Because we set the reflection angle of the AMS to 60◦ , the theoretical resonance frequency
given by Eq. (6) is approximately 20 Hz, and there is also an absorption peak at that frequency in the
black line.

FIG. 4. The application of proposed structure on the microperforated panel. The AMS in the cavity could reduce the resonance
frequency and improve the low-frequency absorption performance. The blue arrow refers to the wave moves towards the MMP.
065211-6 Zhao et al. AIP Advances 7, 065211 (2017)

FIG. 5. The sound absorption coefficient of MPP. The red dashed line is the data of original MPP, the black solid line is that
of MPP with AMS. The low-frequency absorption performance is improved greatly with the help of AMS.

In summary, we have proposed a structure that adds an AMS to the HR, and we have analyzed the
performance of the structure. The result shows that the resonance frequency decreases significantly
with the AMS on the back wall of HR, which increases the effective compliance by Eq. (5). According
to the generalized Snells law, the AMS reflects waves in anomalous direction, leading to a long
transmission path for the propagating waves. Furthermore, we introduced the structure to a MPP. The
absorption peak of the MPP changes from 50 Hz to 9 Hz with the help of the AMS. The phenomenon
is really interesting and has yet to be fully explored. Our structure provides a new method to adjust
the resonance frequency of an HR, which is of great significance in AMS theory, and has potential
applications in sound insulation design.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.
51275519 and 11372346).
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