A lightweight yet sound-proof honeycomb acoustic metamaterial

Ni Sui, Xiang Yan, Tai-Yun Huang, Jun Xu, Fuh-Gwo Yuan, and Yun Jing

Citation: Applied Physics Letters 106, 171905 (2015); doi: 10.1063/1.4919235

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4919235
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 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 106, 171905 (2015)

A lightweight yet sound-proof honeycomb acoustic metamaterial

Ni Sui,1 Xiang Yan,1 Tai-Yun Huang,1 Jun Xu,2 Fuh-Gwo Yuan,1,a) and Yun Jing1,a)
1
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh,
North Carolina 27695, USA
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
Massachusetts 02139, USA
(Received 11 February 2015; accepted 12 April 2015; published online 27 April 2015)
In this letter, a class of honeycomb acoustic metamaterial possessing lightweight and yet sound-
proof properties is designed, theoretically proven, and then experimentally verified. It is here
reported that the proposed metamaterial having a remarkably small mass per unit area at 1.3 kg/m2
can achieve low frequency (<500 Hz) sound transmission loss (STL) consistently greater than
45 dB. Furthermore, the sandwich panel which incorporates the honeycomb metamaterial as the
core material yields a STL that is consistently greater than 50 dB at low frequencies. The proposed
metamaterial is promising for constructing structures that are simultaneously strong, lightweight,
and sound-proof. V C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4919235]

Lighter weight materials are always more desirable in
real-world applications and therefore have been actively pur-
sued in recent years.1,2 One critical shortcoming of these
materials, however, is their suboptimal acoustical perform-
ance: they allow sound to pass through rather easily and
therefore yield a low sound transmission loss (STL). This
phenomenon can be in part explained by the mass law, which
states that the transmission of the noise through the material
is inversely proportional to the product of the thickness, the
density of the material, and the frequency.3 In other words, a
lightweight material in theory translates to a high sound
transmission (i.e., low STL), particularly at low frequencies.
The optimal design of lightweight and high STL of the struc-
ture would therefore usually require design trade-offs.
Noise insulation methods aiming at achieving noise
reduction with minimum weight penalties were traditionally
employed by using porous materials,4,5 perforated media,6,7
or acoustic blankets with mass inclusions.8 They have shown
excellent performance in the high frequency region but fail
at low frequencies. Extensive efforts have been made to de-
velop novel, lightweight materials that can achieve excellent
noise reduction particularly at low frequencies. Recent stud-
ies on membrane-type acoustic metamaterials (AMs) appear
to open up this possibility and have attracted much attention.
The first membrane-type AMs for low frequency noise insu-
lation was proposed by Yang et al.9 By attaching a small
mass onto the membrane with clamped boundaries, a
narrow-band negative dynamic effective mass was tuned
located between the first two resonance frequencies which
resulted in total reflection, therefore breaking the mass law.
Noise reduction in broad-band can be achieved by stacking
up several membrane panels10 and the total mass per unit
area was only around 15 kg/m2. Shortly after, other research-
ers11–13 showed that no-mass-attached membranes or plates
clamped at boundaries could also introduce high STL at low
frequencies. Although the no-mass-attached AMs could be
potentially lighter in weight, the mass-attached, locally
a)
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic
addresses: yjing2@ncsu.edu and yuan@ncsu.edu
resonant membrane-type AMs are the ones that have been
predominately investigated by researchers.14–16
Honeycomb structures,17 which are composed of hollow
cells (typically in a hexagonal shape) formed between thin
vertical walls, are well known to yield minimum weight and
material cost and have been widely used in constructing
lightweight yet strong structures. The honeycomb structures
are typically bonded to high-modulus laminate facesheets to
form honeycomb sandwich panels. However, the sandwich
panels are notorious for their poor acoustic performance at
low frequencies due to the high stiffness and lightweight.17,18
Inspired by the wide-spread use of honeycomb structures
and recent development of no-mass-attached membrane-type
AMs, a honeycomb acoustic metamaterial was designed, the-
oretically studied and experimentally validated in this study.
Figure 1(a) shows a unit cell of the honeycomb acoustic
metamaterial, where an isotropic membrane is adhered on
the top of the honeycomb structure. This material is termed
as a lightweight yet sound-proof acoustic metamaterial.
More importantly, as will be shown later, such a material can
be readily implemented as the honeycomb core material and
thus can potentially make honeycomb sandwiched structures
possess simultaneously strong, lightweight, and sound-proof
properties.
The honeycomb cell structure is typically light in
weight and its out-of-plane (x3 direction) effective Young’s
modulus is considerably greater than the isotropic in-plane
(x1–x2) moduli.19 The proposed metamaterial can be consid-
ered as a composite composed of an isotropic membrane
and a homogenized, transversely isotropic material, as
shown in Fig. 1(b). The effective static mass density for the
metamaterial composite can be obtained as
qm hm þ qc hc
q¼ ; (1)
h
where qc ¼ 2q0 t=½l cos hð1 þ sin hÞ is the effective static
mass density of the honeycomb cell structure,19 q0 is the
mass density of the honeycomb material, qm is the membrane
density, and h ¼ hm þ hc.

0003-6951/2015/106(17)/171905/4/$30.00 106, 171905-1 C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC

V

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 171905-2 Sui et al.
FIG. 1. (a) Unit cell of the honeycomb acoustic metamaterial. The honey-
comb core was made from aramid fiber sheets with t ¼ 0.07 mm,
l ¼ 3.65 mm, hc ¼ 25 mm, and h ¼ 30 . The membrane material was latex
rubber with a thickness hm ¼ 0.25 mm. Two side walls (one marked in the
figure and the opposing one) had a thickness of 2t. The other side walls had
a thickness of t. This is common and is a result of the traditional honeycomb
production method. (b) Side view of the acoustic metamaterial. (c) The
metamaterial prototype used for the acoustical test.
The honeycomb cell structure of the proposed meta-
material was made from aramid fiber sheets and q0 is
1380 kg/m3. Dimensions are as follows: t ¼ 0.07 mm,
l ¼ 3.65 mm, hc ¼ 25 mm, and h ¼ 30 . This specific h
essentially resulted in a regular hexagon. This regular hex-
agon shape is advantageous because the highest crush
strength per unit mass can be obtained.20 As will be seen
later, such cell dimensions lead to the STL dip frequency
occurring at a high frequency ( > 1 kHz). The membrane
material was latex rubber with a thickness hm ¼ 0.25 mm.
The static mass density of the honeycomb structure was
measured to be qc ¼ 32kg=m3 . The Young’s modulus,
mass density, and Poisson’s ratio for the latex rubber were
Em ¼ 7 MPa, qm ¼ 1000 kg/m3, and  m ¼ 0.49, respectively.
According to Eq. (1), the effective static density of the
metamaterial composite q was 41.58 kg/m3. The metamate-
rial composite thereby inherits the lightweight property of
the honeycomb structure. The mass per unit area of the
metamaterial composite was 1.05 kg/m2.
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 106, 171905 (2015)
The metamaterial composite sample that was used for
the acoustic test is shown in Fig. 1(c). It had a diameter of
10 cm. The sound transmission measurements were con-
ducted in Bruel & Kjaer 4206 impedance tubes. The fre-
quency range of the acoustical test was 50 Hz–1600 Hz. The
corresponding wavelengths range from 6860 mm to 214 mm.
The wavelengths were at least two orders of magnitude
larger than the cell dimensions. Numerical simulations were
performed using the acoustic-structure interaction module of
COMSOL multiphysics. Due to the periodic repetition of the
honeycomb cells as well as to enable computationally feasi-
ble modeling, only a single unit cell was considered in the
model. The membrane was assumed to be ideally clamped at
cell boundaries. As will be shown below, in spite of these
assumptions, the simulation results still capture major trends
of the STL behavior.
Figure 2(a) shows the experimental and simulation STL
results for honeycomb cell structure only and the honeycomb
metamaterial. The STLs are shown in units decibel (dB).
Since the honeycomb cell structure is holely and lightweight,
as expected it exhibited very poor acoustical performance.
As shown by the blue line in the figure, the sound is almost
100% transmitted. With membranes added, the resulting
structure showed distinct STL improvement over the entire
frequency range under consideration (red solid line). The
STL was especially high (>25 dB) at low frequencies
(<500 Hz) and decreased monotonically as the frequency
increased before the STL dip at around 1100 Hz. The curve
continued to rise up afterwards. The average STL is 21 dB
over the 50–1600 Hz frequency range vs. 0.2 dB for honey-
comb only. The simulated STL results by considering differ-
ent loss factors for the membrane captured the same trend as
experiment and the predicted STL at the STL dip frequency
increased as the loss factor increased (a loss factor at 0.2 was
chosen for the simulation thereinafter as it yielded the best
agreement at the STL dip frequency).
The anomalous STL is reminiscent of what was theoreti-
cally and experimentally described in the context of plas-
monic checkerboards21 (broadband extraordinary
transmission/absorption in the low frequency regime) and
can be understood by the negative density induced by the
membranes.12,13,22 In this study, the lowest resonant fre-
quency fr ¼ 1160 Hz separates the negative and positive
effective density regions and has a zero effective density23,24
at which the membrane resonates and results in the STL dip.
The zero effective dynamic density indicates an infinite
FIG. 2. (a) Experimental and simula-
tion sound transmission loss results for
honeycomb structure only and the
proposed metamaterial (honeycomb
structure with membranes). For the
simulation, multiple loss factor values
were considered to examine their
effect on the sound transmission loss.
(b) A subwavelength size tube with the
input acoustic impedance Z0 at x ¼ 0
and the acoustic impedance ZL at x ¼ L
where the membrane is located.
 171905-3 Sui et al.
1=2
wavelength in the sample since k / qef f (k is the wave-
length). The high STL at low frequencies is attributed to the
negative density which introduces exponentially decaying
1=2
waves with a decaying length Dd / jqef f j. Since the mag-
nitude of the effective density increases with decreasing fre-
quency, the decaying length Dd of the evanescent wave
reduces as the frequency deviates from the lowest eigenfre-
quency, leading to a greater STL. A simple model of a sub-
wavelength size tube with a clamped membrane inside can
also be utilized to interpret the high STL at low frequencies.
As shown in Fig. 2(b), the input acoustic impedance at x ¼ 0
and the acoustic impedance at the membrane position x ¼ L
are Z0 and ZL, respectively. Since kL  1, the low-frequency
pressure reflection coefficient of this structure can be
obtained as25,26
ZL  Za
rp  ; (2)
ZL þ Za
where Za ¼ qac/A, A is the cross-sectional area, qa is the air
density, and c is the speed of sound in air. At low frequencies
(below the first resonance frequency of the clamped mem-
brane), the acoustic impedance of the membrane Zam can be
approximated by 1/(jxCam),27 where Cam is a parameter
associated with the mechanical and geometrical properties of
the membrane. Therefore, ZL ¼ Za þ Zam  Za þ 1/(jxCam)
(the first term accounts for the plane wave generated behind
the membrane and has an acoustic impedance of Za).
According to Eq. (2), as x approaches zero, rp approaches
1.0, implying total reflection. Furthermore, the acoustic im-
pedance of the membrane at the first resonant frequency van-
ishes, so that ZL  Za. Accordingly, the pressure reflection
coefficient is 0, implying perfect transmission without con-
sidering the damping from the membrane.
To further improve the acoustical performance, the
metamaterial with membranes adhered on both the top and
bottom sides of the honeycomb structure was also explored.
The effective static density of the metamaterial composite
was increased to q ¼ 50.98 kg/m3. Figure 3(a) shows that,
comparing with the sample with only a single membrane,
FIG. 3. Comparison of the sound transmission loss for the metamaterial
sample with two membranes attached on the top and bottom surfaces of the
honeycomb walls and the metamaterial sample with a single membrane.
Each membrane had a thickness of hm ¼ 0.25 mm.
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 106, 171905 (2015)
two membranes combined can enhance the STL by as much
as another 20 dB. The STL at low frequencies (<500 Hz)
was consistently greater than 45 dB. The average STL was
37 dB over the frequency range from 50 to 1600 Hz. This re-
markable result was achieved at a very low mass per unit
area (1.3 kg/m2). The overall STL of the metamaterial with
two membranes attached is not a simple summation of the
STL of two single membrane metamaterials. This is due to
the mutual interaction between the two membranes, as multi-
ple reflections occur between them. Naturally, standing
waves could be generated. According to the normal mode
theory, the lowest frequency normal mode would have a
wavelength twice as long as the distance between the two
membranes, such that the normal mode frequency will be
around 6.8 kHz, considerably higher than the frequency
range of interest. In fact, if there were a sufficient number of
membranes arranged in series, Bragg scattering will prevail
at this frequency and lead to a STL peak. It is also noticed
that two hybrid modes can be seen for the double membranes
system if no damping is considered, as shown by the black
line in Fig. 3, where the first STL dip frequency represents
the two membranes vibrating in unison and the mode fre-
quency (1160 Hz) is independent of the number of the mem-
branes. This can be validated from the one membrane system
as shown by the dotted red line in Fig. 2(a), where the STL
dip frequency occurs at the same frequency. The second STL
dip frequency (1340 Hz) is for the case where the two mem-
branes vibrate out of phase. However, when damping is
taken into account which counteracts the resonances, the
STL curve is smoothened as shown by the blue dashed line
in Fig. (3) and it appears that the first “resonance frequency”
has shifted upwards compared with the one membrane sys-
tem. It is anticipated that the overall STL can be further
enhanced by stacking more membranes in series with the
sacrifice of weight. Furthermore, the existence of the STL
dip is not a critical issue. It occurred at a relatively high fre-
quency (above 1 kHz) in this case as we intentionally
designed and there are many low weight-penalty solutions
available in reducing the high frequency noise.28 This STL
dip frequency could be further shifted to a even higher value
by reducing the unit cell size or increasing the membrane
thickness. This, however, will increase the static density of
the metamaterial. The low STL at this frequency can be also
improved by adopting a membrane material that has a high
loss factor, as suggested by Fig. 2(a). Videos of the acousti-
cal testing are available demonstrating aurally the perform-
ance of the metamaterial.26
A great potential of the proposed acoustic metamaterial
lies in that it can be readily modified to make honeycomb
sandwiched structures which could potentially be simultane-
ously strong, lightweight, and sound-proof. While conven-
tional honeycomb structures comprise a honeycomb panel
sandwiched between two face sheets and are well known to
have extremely high stiffness to weight ratios,19 a different
sandwich structure would consist of two face sheets with one
or more membranes sandwiched between honeycomb panels.
Such a structure with one membrane incorporated was meas-
ured in comparison with a conventional sandwich panel for
their STL and the results are shown in Fig. 4. The two face-
sheets are made of carbon fiber and had a thickness of 1 mm.
 171905-4 Sui et al. Appl. Phys. Lett. 106, 171905 (2015)

extremely useful for aerospace and other transportation

industries.

Ms. N. Sui would like to thank the financial support

from China Scholarship Council in pursuing her Ph.D.
dissertation. Y. Jing acknowledges the financial support from
NC Space Grant New Investigator award.
1
2
3
4
5
FIG. 4. Comparison of the sound transmission loss for a sandwich panel
6
with membranes and a sandwich panel without membranes. The inset figure
shows the structure of the sandwich panel with membranes.
7
8
The total weight for the sandwich panel without the mem-
brane was 29.2 g, whereas the sandwich panel with the mem- 9
brane weighted 31 g which was only 6% higher. Simulations
10
were not performed for this set of experiments because the
acoustical properties of the facesheets are unknown. The 11
conventional sandwich panel (as shown by the blue line)
12
yields a STL dip frequency (around 820 Hz) which is due to 13
the resonance in sandwich honeycomb structures.29 The
presence of the membrane dramatically improved the STL, 14
particularly in the low frequency region below the first reso-
15
nant frequency of the membrane. The properties of the mem-
brane seem to dominate the acoustical performance the
16
sandwich panel. The STL at low frequencies (<500 Hz) was
consistently greater than 50 dB. The average STL over the 17
50–1600 Hz range was 40 dB (w/membrane) vs. 31 dB (w/o
18
membrane). A higher STL is expected with more membranes
added. Finally, it is noted that the addition of the membranes 19
is not expected to degrade the mechanical property of the
20
honeycomb, which is crucial for the future applications.
21
In conclusion, a lightweight and yet sound-proof honey-
comb acoustic metamaterial is designed and experimentally
demonstrated. The use of no-mass-attached membrane-type 22
acoustic metamaterials leads to excellent acoustical perform-
23
ance with minimum weight-penalty. The proposed metama- 24
terials can be used to build the core material of the sandwich 25
26
structures which are experimentally proven to be signifi-
cantly more sound-proof particularly at low frequencies with
27
an extremely low weight penalty. The proposed metamaterial
is promising for constructing structures that are simultane- 28
29
ously strong, lightweight, and sound-proof, which can be
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