On the sound absorption performance of corrugated micro-perforated panel absorbers

Abstract

As an attractive alternative to traditional porous materials, micro-perforated panel (MPP) absorbers have been widely used in room acoustics, environmental noise remediation and duct noise control. In the previous works, the MPP is usually assumed to be a flat panel perforated with sub-millimeter orifices, and that is also the most common form of MPPs used in practice. In practice, however, corrugated panels are widely used in architecture as roofs, ceilings and walls not only for decoration but also for greater rigidity in comparison to the plane plates. For noisy environments such as swimming pools, perforated corrugated panels with a back sound absorption layer or corrugated micro-perforated panels (corrugated MPPs) can be conveniently used to achieve a favourable acoustic environment and reduce the noise level. So far, however, almost all reported studies on MPP absorbers are based on flat MPPs, and a comprehensive investigation on corrugated MPP absorbers is seldom seen. The main purpose of the present work is to investigate the sound absorption performance of corrugated MPP absorbers, with emphasis on comparison with that of flat MPP absorbers. To this end, a three-dimensional (3D) finite element model is established to simulate the sound absorption performance of the corrugated MPP absorber. The corrugated profile is assumed to be sinusoidal and other possible shapes such as triangle and trapezoid are excluded at the current stage. Results show that , replacing the flat MPP with a corrugated one modify the coupling mode in the air-mass system, resulting in different sound absorption performance in comparison with the conventional flat MPP absorbers.