Cochlear bionic acoustic metamaterials

A design of bionic acoustic metamaterial and acoustic functional devices was proposed by employing the mammalian cochlear as a prototype. First, combined with the experimental data in previous literatures, it is pointed out that the cochlear hair cells and stereocilia cluster are a kind of natural biological acoustic metamaterials with the negative stiffness characteristics. Then, to design the acoustic functional devices conveniently in engineering application, a simplified parametric helical structure was proposed to replace actual irregular cochlea for bionic design, and based on the computational results of such a bionic parametric helical structure, it is suggested that the overall cochlear is a local resonant system with the negative dynamic effective mass characteristics. There are many potential applications in the bandboard energy recovery device, cochlear implant, and acoustic black hole. (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.