Enhancing the absorption coefficient of a backed rigid frame porous layer by embedding circular periodic inclusions

The acoustic properties of a porous sheet of medium static air flow resistivity (around 10 000 N m s(-4)), in which a periodic set of circular inclusions is embedded and which is backed by a rigid plate, are investigated. The inclusions and porous skeleton are assumed motionless. Such a structure behaves like a multi-component diffraction grating. Numerical results show that this structure presents a quasi-total (close to unity) absorption peak below the quarter-wavelength resonance of the porous sheet in absence of inclusions. This result is explained by the excitation of a complex trapped mode. When more than one inclusion per spatial period is considered, additional quasi-total absorption peaks are observed. The numerical results, as calculated with the help of the mode-matching method described in this paper, agree with those calculated using a finite element method. (C) 2011 Acoustical Society of America. [DOI: 10.1121/1.3652865]