Acoustic metamaterials (AMs) composed of periodic artificial structures have extraordinary sound wave manipulation capabilities compared with traditional acoustic materials, and they have attracted widespread research attention. The sound insulation performance of thin-walled structures commonly used in engineering applications with restricted space, for example, vehicles’ body structures, and the latest studies on the sound insulation of thin-walled metamaterial structures, are comprehensively discussed in this paper. First, the definition and math law of sound insulation are introduced, alongside the primary methods of sound insulation testing of specimens. Secondly, the main sound insulation acoustic metamaterial structures are summarized and classified, including membrane-type, plate-type, and smart-material-type sound insulation metamaterials, boundaries, and temperature effects, as well as the sound insulation research on composite structures combined with metamaterial structures. Finally, the research status, challenges, and trends of sound insulation metamaterial structures are summarized. It was found that combining the advantages of metamaterial and various composite panel structures with optimization methods considering lightweight and proper wide frequency band single evaluator has the potential to improve the sound insulation performance of composite metamaterials in the full frequency range. Relative review results provide a comprehensive reference for the sound insulation metamaterial design and application.

In this study, porous sound-absorbing materials used as a lining in double-panel structure applications (such as high-speed train body structures) to limit flow-induced vibration interior noise were studied, and acoustic optimization design was performed. First, in the wavenumber domain, the cross-spectrum Corcos model was used to characterize the dynamic hydrodynamic pressure of turbulence. Biot’s theory is used to model the porous materials. The transmission loss (TL) of the sandwich panel were also determined based on the model superposition method. Three types of sandwich panel structures were considered: air–air (A–A), bonded-bonded (B–B), and bonded-air (B–A). The TL of the three structure types under hydrodynamic pressure was used to evaluate the suppression of flow-induced vibration interior noise in porous materials. The effects of flow velocity, thickness and density of the porous material, and three types of polyimide foam on the TL characteristics of the sandwich panel were investigated. The results show that the flow velocity has a significant influence on the TL of the sandwich panel. The TL of the sandwich panel decreases by 3–4 dB when the flow velocity increases by 100 km/h The B–A configuration has satisfactory sound insulation performance at most frequencies. With an increase in material thickness, the TL of the sandwich panel structure first increases and then decreases, and the material density mainly affects the TL of the structure at intermediate and high frequencies. Based on the objectives of maximizing the average transmission loss (TL_avg) and minimizing the structural weight, the acoustic optimization design of the B–A structure was performed, and the balance between the two objective functions was achieved by a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-Ⅱ). The TL_avg s of the sandwich panel structure increased by 5.2 dB when the total mass of the structure was decreased by 0.2 kg.