Taking advantage of a 3D printing imperfection in the development of sound-absorbing materials

Overview & Synopsis

At first glance, it seems that modern, inexpensive additive manufacturing (AM) technologies can be used to produce innovative, efficient acoustic materials with tailored pore morphology. However, on closer inspection, it becomes rather obvious that for now this is only possible for specific solutions, such as relatively thin, but narrow-band sound absorbers. This is mainly due to the relatively poor resolutions available in low-cost AM technologies and devices, which prevents the 3D-printing of pore networks with characteristic dimensions comparable to those found in conventional broadband sound-absorbing materials. Other drawbacks relate to a number of imperfections associated with AM technologies, including porosity or rather microporosity inherent in some of them. This paper shows how the limitations mentioned above can be alleviated by 3D-printing double-porosity structures, where the main pore network can be designed and optimised, while the properties of the intentionally microporous skeleton provide the desired permeability contrast, leading to additional broadband sound energy dissipation due to pressure diffusion. The beneficial effect of additively manufactured double porosity and the phenomena associated with it are rigorously demonstrated and validated in this work, both experimentally and through precise multi-scale modelling, on a comprehensive example that can serve as benchmark.