Prof W J Parnell, Dr P Cotterill
Applications accepted all year round
About the Project
The ability to control underwater noise has been of practical interest for decades. Such noise, radiating from e.g. offshore wind farms, turbines, and merchant vessels, frequently needs to be attenuated artificially given the close proximity of its generation to sensitive marine environments for example.
Over the last century a number of materials have been designed to assist with underwater noise attenuation. However, recently there has been an explosion of interest in the topic of acoustic metamaterials and metasurfaces. Such media have special microstructures, designed to provide overall (dynamic) material properties that natural materials can never hope to attain and lead to the potential of negative refraction, wave redirection and the holy grail of cloaking. Many of the mechanisms to create these artificial materials rely on the notion of resonance, which in turn gives rise to the possibility of low frequency sound attenuation. This is extremely difficult to achieve with normal materials.
The mechanisms of sound attenuation, i.e. thermal and viscous, have not yet been properly understood for the many metamaterials under study, particularly in an underwater context. The aim of this project is to study this aspect via mathematical analysis and then to optimize designs in order to design and employ metamaterials for use in underwater noise reduction applications. Although there has been some initial interest over the last few years in the “in-air” context, the parameter regime underwater gives rise to new effects that need to be explored and understood thoroughly.
Initially canonical geometries such as simple apertures and infinite and semi-infinite ducts shall be considered before moving on to more complex, realistic scenarios and geometries where resonance plays a key role.
Mathematical modelling using the method of matched asymptotics shall be employed. This is ideally suited to the scenarios considered given the low frequency regime. Comparisons shall be drawn with direct numerical simulations using finite element methods in e.g. COMSOL
Continue with Facebook
