RESUMEN
In this work, we show that scattered acoustic vortices generated by metasurfaces with chiral symmetry present broadband unusual properties in the far-field. These metasurfaces are designed to encode the holographic field of an acoustical vortex, resulting in structures with spiral geometry. In the near field, phase dislocations with tuned topological charge emerge when the scattered waves interference destructively along the axis of the spiral metasurface. In the far field, metasurfaces based on holographic vortices inhibit specular reflections because all scattered waves also interfere destructively in the normal direction. In addition, the scattering function in the far field is unusually uniform because the reflected waves diverge spherically from the holographic focal point. In this way, by triggering vorticity, energy can be evenly reflected in all directions except to the normal. As a consequence, the designed metasurface presents a mean correlation-scattering coefficient of 0.99 (0.98 in experiments) and a mean normalized diffusion coefficient of 0.73 (0.76 in experiments) over a 4 octave frequency band. The singular features of the resulting metasurfaces with chiral geometry allow the simultaneous generation of broadband, diffuse and non-specular scattering. These three exceptional features make spiral metasurfaces extraordinary candidates for controlling acoustic scattering and generating diffuse sound reflections in several applications and branches of wave physics as underwater acoustics, biomedical ultrasound, particle manipulation devices or room acoustics.
RESUMEN
The design of graded and anisotropic materials has been of significant interest, especially for sound absorption purposes. Together with the rise of additive manufacturing techniques, new possibilities are emerging from engineered porous micro-structures. In this work, we present a theoretical and numerical study of graded and anisotropic porous materials, for optimal broadband and angular absorption. Through a parametric study, the effective acoustic and geometric parameters of homogenized anisotropic unit cells constitute a database in which the optimal anisotropic and graded material will be searched for. We develop an optimization technique based on the simplex method that is relying on this database. The concepts of average absorption and diffuse field absorption coefficients are introduced and used to maximize angular acoustic absorption. Numerical results present the optimized absorption of the designed anisotropic and graded porous materials for different acoustic targets. The designed materials have anisotropic and graded effective properties, which enhance its sound absorption capabilities. While the anisotropy largely enhances the diffuse field absorbing when optimized at a single frequency, graded properties appear to be crucial for optimal broadband diffuse field absorption.
RESUMEN
This work deals with the sound wave propagation modeling in anisotropic and heterogeneous media. The considered scattering problem involves an infinite layer of finite thickness containing an anisotropic fluid whose properties can vary along the layer depth. The specular transmission and reflection of an acoustic plane wave by such a layer is modeled through the state vector formalism for the acoustic fields. This is solved using three different numerical techniques, namely, the transfer matrix method, Peano series, and transfer Green's function. These three methods are compared to demonstrate the convergence of the numerical solutions. Moreover, the implemented numerical procedures allow the authors to retrieve the internal acoustic fields and show their dependency along with the fluid anisotropic properties. Results are presented to illustrate the changes in absorption that can be achieved by tuning the fluid anisotropy as well as the variation of these properties across the depth of the layer. The results presented are in very good agreement across the different methods. Given that many porous materials can be modeled as equivalent fluids, the results presented show the potential offered by such numerical techniques, and can further give more insight into inhomogeneous anisotropic porous materials.
RESUMEN
Perfect, broadband and asymmetric sound absorption is theoretically, numerically and experimentally reported by using subwavelength thickness panels in a transmission problem. The panels are composed of a periodic array of varying crosssection waveguides, each of them being loaded by Helmholtz resonators (HRs) with graded dimensions. The low cut-off frequency of the absorption band is fixed by the resonance frequency of the deepest HR, that reduces drastically the transmission. The preceding HR is designed with a slightly higher resonance frequency with a geometry that allows the impedance matching to the surrounding medium. Therefore, reflection vanishes and the structure is critically coupled. This results in perfect sound absorption at a single frequency. We report perfect absorption at 300 Hz for a structure whose thickness is 40 times smaller than the wavelength. Moreover, this process is repeated by adding HRs to the waveguide, each of them with a higher resonance frequency than the preceding one. Using this frequency cascade effect, we report quasi-perfect sound absorption over almost two frequency octaves ranging from 300 to 1000 Hz for a panel composed of 9 resonators with a total thickness of 11 cm, i.e., 10 times smaller than the wavelength at 300 Hz.
RESUMEN
We present deep-subwavelength diffusing surfaces based on acoustic metamaterials, namely metadiffusers. These sound diffusers are rigidly backed slotted panels, with each slit being loaded by an array of Helmholtz resonators. Strong dispersion is produced in the slits and slow sound conditions are induced. Thus, the effective thickness of the panel is lengthened introducing its quarter wavelength resonance in the deep-subwavelength regime. By tuning the geometry of the metamaterial, the reflection coefficient of the panel can be tailored to obtain either a custom reflection phase, moderate or even perfect absorption. Using these concepts, we present ultra-thin diffusers where the geometry of the metadiffuser has been tuned to obtain surfaces with spatially dependent reflection coefficients having uniform magnitude Fourier transforms. Various designs are presented where, quadratic residue, primitive root and ternary sequence diffusers are mimicked by metadiffusers whose thickness are 1/46 to 1/20 times the design wavelength, i.e., between about a twentieth and a tenth of the thickness of traditional designs. Finally, a broadband metadiffuser panel of 3 cm thick was designed using optimization methods for frequencies ranging from 250 Hz to 2 kHz.
RESUMEN
We predict the existence of evanescent modes with unlocked phases in two-dimensional (2D) dielectric periodic structures. Contrary to what is known for one-dimensional structures, where evanescent fields lock to the host modulation, we show that in 2D systems a new class of evanescent modes exists with an unlocked real part of the wave vector. Hence, beams constructed from such unlocked evanescent waves can exhibit spatial effects. A significant focalization of a beam propagating within the band gap of a flat photonic crystal slab is also shown. The predicted phenomenon is expected to be generic for spatially modulated materials.