Sound insulation and energy harvesting based on acoustic metamaterial plate

The emergence of artificially designed sub-wavelength acoustic materials, denoted acoustic metamaterials (AMM), has significantly broadened the range of materials responses found in nature. These engineered materials can indeed manipulate sound/vibration in surprising ways, which include vibration/sound insulation, focusing, cloaking, acoustic energy harvesting …. In this work, we report both on the analysis of the airborne sound transmission loss (STL) through a thin metamaterial plate and on the possibility of acoustic energy harvesting. We first provide a theoretical study of the airborne STL and confronted them to the structure-borne dispersion of a metamaterial plate. Second, we propose to investigate the acoustic energy harvesting capability of the plate-type AMM. We have developed semi-analytical and numerical methods to investigate the STL performances of a plate-type AMM with an airborne sound excitation having different incident angles. The AMM is made of silicone rubber stubs squarely arranged in a thin aluminum plate, and the STL is calculated at low-frequency range [100Hz to 3kHz] for an incoming incident sound pressure wave. The obtained analytical and numerical STL present a very good agreement confirming the reliability of developed approaches. A comparison between computed STL and the band structure of the considered AMM shows an excellent agreement and gives a physical understanding of the observed behavior. On another hand, the acoustic energy confinement in AMM with created defects with suitable geometry was investigated. The first results give a general view for assessing the acoustic energy harvesting performances making use of AMM.