The sound absorption of a porous layer is affected by its thickness, especially in a low-frequency range. If a hard-backed porous layer contains periodical arrangements of rigid partitions that are coordinated parallel and perpendicular to the direction of incoming sound waves, the lower bound of the effective sound absorption can be lowered much more and the overall absorption performance enhanced. The consequence of rigid partitioning in a porous layer is to make the first thickness resonance mode in the layer appear at much lower frequencies compared to that in the original homogeneous porous layer with the same thickness. Moreover, appropriate partitioning yields multiple thickness resonances with higher absorption peaks through impedance matching. The physics of the partitioned porous layer, or the metaporous layer, is theoretically investigated in this study.

Sound absorption for a broad frequency range requires sound dissipation. The mechanics of acoustic metamaterials for non-dissipative applications has been extensively studied, but sound absorption using dissipative porous metamaterials has been less explored because of the complexity resulting from the coupling of its dissipative mechanism and metamaterial behavior. We investigated broadband sound absorption by engineering dissipative metaporous layers, which absorb sound by the mechanism of multiple slow waves, and combined local and global resonance phenomena. A set of rigid partitions of varying lengths was elaborately inserted in a hard-backed porous layer of a finite thickness. An effective medium theory was used to explain the physics involved; high performance at a low-frequency range was found to be mainly due to the formation of global resonances caused by multiple slow waves over the thickness of the metaporous layer, while enhancement at a high-frequency range was attributed to the combined effects of the global resonances and the local resonances directly related to the sizes of the inserted partitions.

Sound transmission reduction is typically governed by the mass law, requiring thicker panels to handle lower frequencies. When open holes must be inserted in panels for heat transfer, ventilation, or other purposes, the efficient reduction of sound transmission through holey panels becomes difficult, especially in the low-frequency ranges. Here, we propose slow-wave metamaterial open panels that can dramatically lower the working frequencies of sound transmission loss. Global resonances originating from slow waves realized by multiply inserted, elaborately designed subwavelength rigid partitions between two thin holey plates contribute to sound transmission reductions at lower frequencies. Owing to the dispersive characteristics of the present metamaterial panels, local resonances that trap sound in the partitions also occur at higher frequencies, exhibiting negative effective bulk moduli and zero effective velocities. As a result, low-frequency broadened sound transmission reduction is realized efficiently in the present metamaterial panels. The theoretical model of the proposed metamaterial open panels is derived using an effective medium approach and verified by numerical and experimental investigations.