Porous-Solid Metaconverters for Broadband Underwater Sound Absorption and Insulation

Existing solid composite structures composed of several viscoelastic materials and metals mainly exploit diverse resonances, damping, and scattering to realize underwater acoustic wave functionalities. However, low-frequency broadband underwater sound absorption and insulation are still hard to capture with an acoustic coating possessing subwavelength thickness and lightweight nature simultaneously. This paper reports the systematic simulated and experimental validations of a porous-solid underwater metaconverter, consisting of a rubber layer and a topology-optimized elastic metasurface to exhibit broadband functionalities of sound absorption and insulation caused by the strong reflective and transmitted longitudinal-to-transverse wave conversion, while sustaining broadband impedance matching. Various results confirm the predicted capabilities of underwater broadband high-efficiency sound absorption (>80%) or insulation (20 dB) within the range of 2-10 kHz for a large- and limited-size sample, providing an estimate of the energy-converting effect and phenomenon. The present study provides possibilities for elastic wave energy dissipation, harvesting, and underwater acoustic stealth via metasurfaces.