Sound absorption by a soft medium embedded with complex-shaped hard inclusions

Acoustic coatings for marine applications are commonly designed using a soft elastic matrix embedded with an array of resonant inclusions. In this work, a simple analytical approach to predict the acoustic performance of a soft elastic matrix embedded with hard inclusions of complex shape is presented. Utilizing analogies from fluid dynamics and electrostatics, a small number of well-known lumped parameters such as the added mass and capacitance are employed to relate the dominant dipole component of scattering of a complex-shaped hard inclusion to that of an equivalent sphere. Effective acoustic properties are then derived using a homogenization. The absorption coefficient of the coating for a range of complex shapes is compared with numerical simulations.