Acoustic design by topology optimization

Abstract

To bring down noise levels in human surroundings is an important issue and a method to reduce noise by means of topology optimization is presented here. The acoustic field is modeled by Helmholtz equation and the topology optimization method is based on continuous material interpolation functions in the density and bulk modulus. The objective function is the squared sound pressure amplitude. First, room acoustic problems are considered and it is shown that the sound level can be reduced in a certain part of the room by an optimized distribution of reflecting material in a design domain along the ceiling or by distribution of absorbing and reflecting material along the walls. We obtain well defined optimized designs for a single frequency or a frequency interval for both 2D and 3D problems when considering low frequencies. Second, it is shown that the method can be applied to design outdoor sound barriers in order to reduce the sound level in the shadow zone behind the barrier. A reduction of up to 10 dB for a single barrier and almost 30 dB when using two barriers are achieved compared to utilizing conventional sound barriers.