Pentamode Materials Research Articles

Acoustic metafluids

Acoustic metafluids are defined as the class of fluids that allow one domain of fluid to acoustically mimic another, as exemplified by acoustic cloaks. It is shown that the most general class of acoustic metafluids are materials with anisotropic inertia and the elastic properties of what are known as pentamode materials. The derivation uses the notion of finite deformation to define the transformation of one region to another. The main result is found by considering energy density in the original and transformed regions. Properties of acoustic metafluids are discussed, and general conditions are found which ensure that the mapped fluid has isotropic inertia, which potentially opens up the possibility of achieving broadband cloaking.

Acoustic cloaking theory

An acoustic cloak is a compact region enclosing an object, such that sound incident from all directions passes through and around the cloak as though the object was not present. A theory of acoustic cloaking is developed using the transformation or change-of-variables method for mapping the cloaked region to a point with vanishing scattering strength. We show that the acoustical parameters in the cloak must be anisotropic: either the mass density or the mechanical stiffness or both. If the stiffness is isotropic, corresponding to a fluid with a single bulk modulus, then the inertial density must be infinite at the inner surface of the cloak. This requires an infinitely massive cloak. We show that perfect cloaking can be achieved with finite mass through the use of anisotropic stiffness. The generic class of anisotropic material required is known as a pentamode material (PM). If the transformation deformation gradient is symmetric then the PM parameters are explicit, otherwise its properties depend on a stress-like tensor that satisfies a static equilibrium equation. For a given transformation mapping, the material composition of the cloak is not uniquely defined, but the phase speed and wave velocity of the pseudo-acoustic waves in the cloak are unique. Examples are given from two and three dimensions.