Acoustic metafluids

Acoustic metafluids are defined as the class of fluids that allow one domain of fluid to acoustically mimic another, as exemplified by acoustic cloaks. It is shown that the most general class of acoustic metafluids are materials with anisotropic inertia and the elastic properties of what are known as pentamode materials. The derivation uses the notion of finite deformation to define the transformation of one region to another. The main result is found by considering energy density in the original and transformed regions. Properties of acoustic metafluids are discussed, and general conditions are found which ensure that the mapped fluid has isotropic inertia, which potentially opens up the possibility of achieving broadband cloaking. (C) 2009 Acoustical Society of America.. [DOI: 10.1121/1.3050288]