Limp microperforated panel finite elements and its application

Abstract

Microperforated panel (MPP) absorbers provide relatively broadband sound absorption with the superior material properties in durability, recyclability, and flexibility of design, and they can be considered as an attractive alternative of conventional sound absorbers. Recently, with the rapid progress of computer technology, numerical methods such as finite element method (FEM) and boundary element method have become powerful design tools for developing MPP absorbers with the consideration of advantage in handling arbitrary geometries, and there exist some computational models of MPP. This paper presents a simple and computationally efficient limp MPP elements to treat MPP absorbers in finite element analysis and the performance is demonstrated in various problems. First, the theory of MPP elements is presented briefly. Then, the validity is shown using impedance tube problems, in which the absorption characteristics of some MPP absorbers calculated using FEM are compared with the theoretical values. Finally, the applicability to room acoustics simulations is demonstrated by calculating transfer functions and impulse responses of rooms with practical dimensions.