Microstructural design, manufacturing and dual-scale modelling of an adaptable porous composite sound absorber

This work investigates a porous composite with modifiable micro-geometry so that its ability to absorb noise can be accommodated to different frequency ranges. The polymeric skeleton of the composite has a specific periodic structure with two types of pores (larger and smaller ones) and two types of channels (wide and narrow ones), and each of the large pores contains a small steel ball. Depending on the situation, the balls block different channels that connect the pores, and therefore alter the visco-inertial phenomena between the saturating air and solid skeleton which take place at the micro-scale level and are responsible for the dissipation of the energy of acoustic waves penetrating the porous composite. All this is studied numerically using advanced dual-scale modelling, and the results are verified by the corresponding experimental tests of 3D-printed samples. Particular attention is paid to the prototyping and additive manufacturing of such adaptive porous composites.