A wideband triple-layer microperforated panel sound absorber

Pedro Cobo, Carlos de la Colina, Elena Roibás-Millán, Marcos Chimeno, Francisco Simón
Composite Structures Volume 226, 15 October 2019, 111226

Microperforated panels are light, clean and tunable sound absorbers, which fundamentals were already established in the previous century. They consist of a distribution of minute holes of diameter d on a panel of thickness t with perforation ratio ϕ in front of an air layer of thickness D. Therefore, the frequency band of absorption of a single-layer microperforated panel depends on (d, t, ϕ, D). In noise control applications, such a simple structure provides absorption in the frequency range of interest if holes are of sub-millimetric diameter. The former single-layer microperforated panels had two main weaknesses: narrow frequency band of absorption and a high manufacturing cost. However, nowadays these deficiencies can be easily surpassed. The absorption frequency band can be drastically increased by means of multiple-layer structures. The manufacturing cost may be reduced with the application of techniques currently used in the advanced circuitry industry. This is illustrated by the design of a triple-layer microperforated panel yielding absorption in almost four and a half octaves. The parameters of the triple-layer microperforated panel are optimised by Simulated Annealing to provide maximum absorption within a prescribed frequency band.

Acknowledgement

This work has been funded by AEI/FEDER, EU project with reference number DPI2016-79559-R.