Reconfigurable origami silencers for tunable and programmable sound attenuation

Abstract

Recent research has discovered that origami-inspired structures possess great versatility in properties and functionalities. In this research, through an integration of origami geometry and duct acoustics, we reveal that the folding-induced shape reconfiguration of a modular origami silencer could yield great tunability and programmability in sound attenuation. This has been made possible through exploring the kinematics of the folding and the extensibility of the modular origami. Numerical and experimental results indicate that by reconfiguring the silencer via a single degree-of-freedom folding mechanism, the sound attenuation bandwidth can be effectively tuned. Meanwhile, based on a comprehensive understanding on the correlations between the origami geometries and the acoustic characteristics, we exemplify that, by incorporating multiple origami layers in a silencer and by programming their geometries, ondemand sound control can be achieved, e.g., attenuation in the prescribed frequency bands, improved attenuation levels, and broadband attenuations. This proof-of-concept study shows that the proposed folding-based mechanism, along with the modularization design concept, would provide a new way to reconfigure the silencer for acoustic adaptability and inspire new innovation in designing acoustic devices.

Fabricating and Assembling Acoustic Metamaterials and Phononic Crystals

“…[151] Besides membranes, this assembly technique was also utilized over a range of other AMM and PC design types. These include examples like reconfigurable origami modules and lattices [45,46] and a PC plate with arrays of cylindrical piezoelectric resonators. [152] It is noteworthy that the handling and alignment of small structures can be challenging when conducted manually.…”

“…Other types of AMMs may not operate through resonance but by coiling space in labyrinthine structures ( Figure 1e) [42,43] or waveguiding using origami-based structures (Figure 1f ). [44][45][46] AMM design generally revolves around the parameters of effective mass density (ρ) and bulk modulus (K ), [31] where they can be singly negative (either ρ < 0 or K < 0) or doubly negative (both ρ < 0 and K < 0), depending on the type of structure. [47,48] While theoretically defining such parameters, we must determine the feasibility of building such structures.…”

“…[18] Copyright 2018, IOP Publishing Ltd.), p) labyrinthine structures [43,75] (Image reproduced with permission. [43] Copyright 2017, AIP Publishing LLC), q) origami-based structures [44][45][46] (Image reproduced with permission. [46] Copyright 2019, American Physical Society), and r) crystal lattice structures [3,32,152,156,157,159] (Image reproduced under terms of the CC-BY license.…”

Compact broadband acoustic meta-silencer based on synergy between reactive and resistive units

“…In fact, coupling multiple units to achieve a broad bandwidth is the most direct and effective way in the metamaterial design [41][42][43][44]. Recently, several broadband locally-resonant AMS have been proposed [38,42,45,46]. For example, Nguyen [37] proposed a subwavelength double-layer acoustic silencer based on the slit-type Helmholtz resonators, and the fluctuating TL produced by various resonances can be mitigated via the thermal viscosity inside the HR slit.…”

Revealing the Dynamic Characteristics of Composite Material-Based Miura-Origami Tube

“…The goal of origami design is to design a specific crease patterns and then transform a sheet-like planar material into an exquisite three-dimensional structure by folding the material along these predefined creases [ 4 ]. Owing to the various benefits, including flexible design, simple manufacturing, and light weight, origami structures have demonstrated tremendous application potential in actual engineering for diverse fields, e.g., spacecraft solar panels [ 5 , 6 ], re-configurable structure design [ 7 , 8 ], energy-absorbing structures [ 9 , 10 , 11 ], biomedical equipment [ 12 , 13 ], foldable lithium-ion batteries [ 14 , 15 ], origami springs [ 16 , 17 ], origami robots [ 18 , 19 , 20 ], and sound barriers [ 21 , 22 , 23 ].…”