Highly efficient isolation of waterborne sound by an air-sealed meta-screen

Abstract

Underwater sound isolation has been a long-standing fundamental issue in industry and military fields. Starting from a simple theoretical model, here an air-sealed meta-screen is proposed to overcome this problem. Comparing with the sample without filling air, the effective impedance of the air-sealed one is greatly reduced and strikingly mismatch with water, accompanying another merit of low sound speed. Deeply suppressed sound transmission (∼50 dB) through such a meta-screen is observed experimentally over a wide range of ultrasonic frequencies and incident angles.