A Half-Analytical Method to Predict the Sound Absorption of Multiple Inhomogeneous Resonators Based on Sellers’ Method

Abstract

This study proposes a general half-analytical method to predict the sound absorption of multiple inhomogeneous resonators inspired by Sellers’ method with small calculation cost. In this method, the sound absorption coefficient of single units is calculated by the finite element method (FEM), and superposition is used to predict the sound absorption coefficient of the overall structure. Unlike existing fully analytical methods that have difficulties with complicated or novel constructions, we combine FEM and the analytical method called the half-analytical method (HAE), which predicts sound absorption performance with excellent results. Two example structures are tested and the absorption coefficients from the analytical method, FEM, present method, and experiment show excellent agreement. The novel HAE method is promising to accurately predict the sound absorption coefficient of multiple inhomogeneous structures.