3D Printed Acoustic Materials for the Performance Enhancement of a Building Acoustics Silencer

This research develops and applies novel acoustic-material solutions for the performance enhancement of a building acoustics silencer. The material performance is achieved through the design of lattices of subwavelength unit cells and resonating structures. The resulting material consists of an open pore network, which can act as a chain of resonators with multiple degrees of freedom. The geometrical designs were manufactured using fused deposition modelling. The performance enhancement was demonstrated through a comparison of an unaltered and an altered commercial silencer. The modified silencer was reassembled, containing the produced lattices. The acoustic-transmission loss of the two samples was experimentally determined according to ASTM E2611, and the results were compared. Our findings show that superior low-frequency sound attenuation can be achieved using low-cost novel acoustic materials. These results offer insights into the potential for the industrial application of 3D printed materials for the building acoustics sector.