Sound Transmission Loss of Metamaterial Honeycomb Core Sandwich Plate Elastically Connected with Periodic Subwavelength Arrays of Shunted Piezoelectric Patches

Honeycomb core sandwich plates are widely used as a lightweight, high-strength sound insulation material. However, they do not perform well in specific frequency bands. Acoustic metamaterials can break the law of mass in specific frequency bands and have high sound transmission loss (STL); however, the resonance frequency is difficult to regulate. To solve this problem, this paper first proposes an infinitely large metamaterial honeycomb core sandwich plate, which can generate newly tuned piezoelectric resonance frequencies, and we study its STL. The structure has piezoelectric patches arranged in sub-wavelength arrays with inductance shunting circuits that are elastically connected to both sides of the honeycomb core sandwich plate. The effective dynamic mass density and effective dynamic bending stiffness of the metamaterial plates were obtained using the effective medium (EM) method. A theoretical model for the numerical calculation of oblique STL and diffuse-field STL was established by the structural bending wave method. The finite element simulation method was used to verify that the metamaterial plates can generate three peaks at 1147 Hz, 1481 Hz and 1849 Hz in oblique or diffuse-field STL curves, which reached 57 dB, 86 dB and 63 dB, respectively, and are significantly better than the plate rigidly connected with piezoelectric sheets and the bare plate with the same mass. In order to better understand the characteristics of STL, the explicit functions of the resonance frequencies were derived. Key influencing factors were analyzed, and the regulation law of new piezoelectric resonance frequencies was clarified.