Xu-Dong Fan

Ultrathin Acoustic Metasurface-Based Schroeder Diffuser

“Schroeder diffuser” is a classical design, proposed over 40 years ago, for artificially creating optimal and predictable sound diffuse reflection. It has been widely adopted in architectural acoustics, and it has also shown substantial potential in noise control, ultrasound imaging, microparticle manipulation et al. The conventional Schroeder diffuser, however, has a considerable thickness on the order of one wavelength, severely impeding its applications for low-frequency sound. In this paper, a new class of ultrathin and planar Schroeder diffusers are proposed based on the concept of an acoustic metasurface. Both numerical and experimental results demonstrate satisfactory sound diffuse reflection produced from the metasurface-based Schroeder diffuser despite it being approximately 1 order of magnitude thinner than the conventional one. The proposed design not only offers promising building blocks with great potential to profoundly impact architectural acoustics and related fields, but it also constitutes a major step towards real-world applications of acoustic metasurfaces. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.7.021034 Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Published by the American Physical Society

Three-dimensional ultra-broadband focusing flat mirror for airborne sound

We report the theoretical design, numerical simulation, and experimental demonstration of a flat mirror capable to efficiently focus the reflected sound in three-dimensional space within an ultra-broad band. The proposed mirror is implemented with a textured rigid surface, enabling simple design and easy fabrication. We analytically derive the distribution of geometric parameters needed for producing ultra-broadband focusing, and verify the performance of resulting mirror both numerically and experimentally. Furthermore, our scheme allows further extending of the working band by resizing individual elements. Our design with simplicity and capability may promote the application of focusing devices generally subject to limited bandwidth.

Broadband convergence of acoustic energy with binary reflected phases on planar surface

We propose to produce efficient three-dimensional sound converging in broadband with binary reflected phases on a planar surface with unit cells consisting of only two kinds of elements. The mechanism is experimentally demonstrated by focusing airborne sound and by forming an “acoustic needle,” with handmade arrays of commercial test tubes with/without lids. Both the simulated and measured results show the precise control of converging acoustic energy despite misalignment errors obvious even to naked eyes. Our approach with extreme simplicity yet good robustness may apply in various scenarios that conventionally need complicated elements and continuous variation of parameters for focusing sound.

Multi-frequency acoustic metasurface for extraordinary reflection and sound focusing

We theoretically and numerically present the design of multi-frequency acoustic metasurfaces (MFAMs) with simple structure that can work not only at fundamental frequency, but also at their harmonic frequencies, which breaks the single frequency limitation in conventional resonance-based acoustic metasurfaces. The phase matched condition for achromatic manipulation is discussed. We demonstrate achromatic extraordinary reflection and sound focusing at 1700Hz, 3400Hz, and 5100Hz, that is, they have the same reflection direction and the same focusing position. This significant feature may pave the way to new type of acoustic metasurface, and will also extend acoustic metasurface applications to strongly nonlinear source cases.

Non-blind acoustic invisibility by dual layers of homogeneous single-negative media

Non-blind invisibility cloaks allowing the concealed object to sense the outside world have great application potentials such as in high-precision sensing or underwater camouflage. However the existing designs based on coordinate transformation techniques need complicated spatially-varying negative index or intricate multi-layered configurations, substantially increasing the difficulty in practical realization. Here we report on the non-blind acoustic invisibility for a circular object in free space with simple distribution of cloak parameters. The mechanism is that, instead of utilizing the transformation acoustics technique, we develop the analytical formulae for fast prediction of the scattering from the object and then use an evolutionary optimization to retrieve the desired cloak parameters for minimizing the scattered field. In this way, it is proven possible to break through the fundamental limit of complementary condition that must be satisfied by the effective parameters of the components in transformation acoustics-based cloaks. Numerical results show that the resulting cloak produces a non-bflind invisibility as perfect as in previous designs, but only needs two layers with homogenous single-negative parameters. With full simplification in parameter distribution and broken symmetry in complementary relationship, our scheme opens new route to free-space non-blind invisibility, taking a significant step towards real-world application of cloaking devices.

Fine manipulation of sound via lossy metamaterials with independent and arbitrary reflection amplitude and phase

The fine manipulation of sound fields is critical in acoustics yet is restricted by the coupled amplitude and phase modulations in existing wave-steering metamaterials. Commonly, unavoidable losses make it difficult to control coupling, thereby limiting device performance. Here we show the possibility of tailoring the loss in metamaterials to realize fine control of sound in three-dimensional (3D) space. Quantitative studies on the parameter dependence of reflection amplitude and phase identify quasi-decoupled points in the structural parameter space, allowing arbitrary amplitude-phase combinations for reflected sound. We further demonstrate the significance of our approach for sound manipulation by producing self-bending beams, multifocal focusing, and a single-plane two-dimensional hologram, as well as a multi-plane 3D hologram with quality better than the previous phase-controlled approach. Our work provides a route for harnessing sound via engineering the loss, enabling promising device applications in acoustics and related fields.The formation of true holograms requires control of both amplitude and phase; however, acoustic metamaterials are generally limited to phase control only. Here, Zhu et al. tailor lossy metamaterials to independently control the amplitude and phase of acoustic wavefronts.

Ultra-broadband and planar sound diffuser with high uniformity of reflected intensity

Schroeder diffusers, as a classical design of acoustic diffusers proposed over 40 years ago, play key roles in many practical scenarios ranging from architectural acoustics to noise control to particle manipulation. Despite the great success of conventional acoustic diffusers, it is still worth pursuing ideal acoustic diffusers that are essentially expected to produce perfect sound diffuse reflection within the unlimited bandwidth. Here, we propose a different mechanism for designing acoustic diffusers to overcome the basic limits in intensity uniformity and working bandwidth in the previous designs and demonstrate a practical implementation by acoustic metamaterials with dispersionless phase-steering capability. In stark contrast to the existing production of diffuse fields relying on random scattering of sound energy by using a specific mathematical number sequence of periodically distributed unit cells, we directly mold the reflected wavefront into the desired shape by precisely manipulating the local ...