Acoustic skin meta-muffler

The effective elimination of sound energy traveling in open ducts is critical in acoustics, with considerable potential in diverse applications ranging from duct noise control to exhaust system design. However, previous absorber mechanisms are bulky or have limited ventilation or unsatisfactory absorption capability. We propose and experimentally demonstrate the concept of meta-mufflers capable of quasi-perfectly absorbing airborne sound propagating in an open duct while minimizing the influence on airflow because of its vanishing thickness. The mechanism uses coupling among asymmetric metasurfaces to achieve impedance match and subsequent high absorption in a subwavelength scale, which is explained analytically and validated experimentally. The proposed meta-muffler features an uncomplicated design, high attenuation efficiency, and a thickness of nearly two orders of magnitude of wavelength, ensuring the free pass of other entities. Furthermore, our design offers the flexibility of tuning and extending working bandwidth by hybridization of weak resonances. The performance of the proposed muffler is verified via experiments, which correlate excellently with theoretical predictions. The realization of meta-mufflers opens a route to novel acoustic absorbers and could have far-reaching implications in a plethora of important scenarios calling for both perfect sound absorption and open acoustic paths.