Transmission loss of plates with embedded acoustic black holes

In recent years acoustic black holes (ABHs) have been developed and demonstrated as an effective method for developing lightweight, high loss structures for noise and vibration control. ABHs employ a local thickness change to tailor the speed and amplitude of flexural bending waves and create concentrated regions of high strain energy which can be effectively dissipated through conventional damping treatments. These regions act as energy sinks which allow for effective broadband vibration absorption with minimal use of applied damping material. This, combined with the reduced mass from the thickness tailoring, results in a treated structure with higher loss and less mass than the original. In this work, the transmission loss (TL) of plates with embedded ABHs was investigated using experimental and numerical methods in order to assess the usefulness of ABH systems for TL applications. The results demonstrated that damped ABH plates offer improved performance compared to a uniform plate despite having less mass. The result will be useful for applying ABHs and ABH systems to practical noise and vibration control problems.