To reduce the noise generated by large mechanical equipment, a stackable and expandable acoustic metamaterial with multiple tortuous channels (SEAM-MTCs) was developed in this study. The proposed SEAM-MTCs consisted of odd panels, even panels, chambers, and a final closing plate, and these component parts could be fabricated separately and then assembled. The influencing factors, including the number of layers N, the thickness of panel t0, the size of square aperture a, and the depth of chamber T0 were investigated using acoustic finite element simulation. The sound absorption mechanism was exhibited by the distributions of the total acoustic energy density at the resonance frequencies. The number of resonance frequencies increased from 13 to 31 with the number of layers N increasing from 2 to 6, and the average sound absorption coefficients in [200 Hz, 6000 Hz] was improved from 0.5169 to 0.6160. The experimental validation of actual sound absorption coefficients in [200 Hz, 1600 Hz] showed excellent consistency with simulation data, which proved the accuracy of the finite element simulation model and the reliability of the analysis of influencing factors. The proposed SEAM-MTCs has great potential in the field of equipment noise reduction.
Keywords: acoustic finite element simulation; experimental validation; influencing factors; multiple tortuous channels; noise reduction; sound absorption mechanism; sound absorption performance; stackable and expandable acoustic metamaterial.