Subwavelength slit acoustic metamaterial barrier

[EN] Reduction of noise in the transmission path is a very important environmental problem. The standard method to reduce this noise level is the use of acoustic barriers. In this paper, an acoustic metamaterial based on sound transmission through subwavelength slits, is tailored to be used as an acoustic barrier. This system consists of two rows of periodic repetition of vertical rigid pickets separated by a slit of subwavelength width, embedded in air. Here, both the experimental and the numerical analyses are presented. These analyses have facilitated the identification of the parameters that affect the insertion loss performance. The results demonstrated that the proposed barrier can be tuned to mitigate a band noise in a mechanical plant for buildings where openings for air flow are required as well as industrial noise, without excessive barrier thickness.This work was financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through project MAT2010-16879.Rubio Michavila, C.; Candelas Valiente, P.; Belmar Ibáñez, F.; Gómez Lozano, V.; Uris Martínez, A. (2015). Subwavelength slit acoustic metamaterial barrier. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. 48(39):1-9. https://doi.org/10.1088/0022-3727/48/39/395501S19483