Multi-resonant scatterers in sonic crystals: Locally multi-resonant acoustic metamaterial

An acoustic metamaterial made of a two-dimensional (2D) periodic array of multi-resonant acoustic scatterers is analyzed both experimentally and theoretically. The building blocks consist of a combination of elastic beams of low-density polyethylene foam (LDPF) with cavities of known area. Elastic resonances of the beams and acoustic resonances of the cavities can be excited by sound producing several attenuation peaks in the low frequency range. Due to this behavior the periodic array with long wavelength multi-resonant structural units can be classified as a locally multi-resonant acoustic metamaterial (LMRAM) with strong dispersion of its effective properties.The results presented in this paper could be used to design effective tunable acoustic filters for the low frequency range.