A thin and conformal metasurface for illusion acoustics of rapidly changing profiles

Abstract

© 2017 Author(s). Recently developed metasurfaces have been used for surface engineering applications. However, the ability to cloak or mimic reflective surfaces with a large in-plane phase gradient remains unexplored. One major challenge is that even with a small incidence angle, the strong acoustic impedance variation induced by the random height profile creates additional scattering and increases the complexity of the analysis and design of the metasurface. Here, we introduce an acoustic metasurface with 1/12 wavelength thickness to realize an acoustic carpet cloak for a randomly rapid-change surface and a virtual acoustic diffuser from a flat surface using a set of Helmholtz resonators. The limitation of the metasurface for large phase gradient application is explored based on a nonlocal model that considers the contributions from neighboring surface profiles. This study extends the integration of smart acoustic surface and may find applications of surface engineering such as in architectural acoustics.