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Japanese Journal of Applied Physics 59, 045503 (2020) REGULAR PAPER
https://doi.org/10.35848/1347-4065/ab83a0

Low-frequency sound absorber based on micro-slit entrance and space-coiling

channels
Wenyuan Chen1, Fei Wu1,2*, Jihong Wen2*, Zegang Ju1, Lingyun Yao1 , Honggang Zhao2, Yang Wang2, and Yong Xiao2
1
College of Engineering and Technology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, People’s Republic of China
2
Laboratory of Science and Technology on Integrated Logistics Support, College of Intelligence Science, National University of Defense Technology,
Changsha 410073, People’s Republic of China
*
E-mail: wufeifrank@swu.edu.cn; wenjihong@vip.sina.com
Received November 6, 2019; revised March 10, 2020; accepted March 25, 2020; published online April 9, 2020

We designed a low-frequency (<500 Hz) sound attenuation absorber based on micro-slits and space-coiling channels. The absorber provides
near-perfect absorption at an extremely low-frequency of 137 Hz, simultaneously featuring a deep sub-wavelength thickness down to λ/85
(29.5 mm). It is proved that the excellent absorption is mainly caused by the friction losses of acoustic waves in micro-slits and the increase of the
effective propagation length. By adjusting folding numbers and partition panels, the resonance frequency of the absorber is easily tuned and near-
total absorption is obtained under fixed thickness. We further broadened relative absorption bandwidth to 54% by coupling two unit cells exhibiting
different properties. The absorption mechanism is investigated utilizing acoustic impedance together with the reflection coefficient in the complex
frequency plane. The absorption properties were demonstrated analytically, numerically and experimentally. The high-efficiency absorption, sub-
wavelength thickness, and easy fabrication suggest that the absorber could have potential applications in acoustic engineering.
© 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

Supplementary material for this article is available online

micro-slits with labyrinthine structures or space-coiling chan-

1. Introduction
In the practical design of anechoic structures, the attenuation
of low-frequency (<500 Hz) acoustic waves has been chal-
lenging due to the weak intrinsic dissipation. Although
porous materials,1,2) micro-perforated/slit plate3–6) absorbers
are effective to dampen noise, generally possess a structural
thickness comparable to working wavelength, which hinders
their potentials in low-frequency region.
For decades, a plenty of acoustic metamaterials7–14) [e.g.
decorated membrane resonators,15–17) Helmholtz
18–21)
resonators, Fabry–Pérot (FP) channel22–25)] have been
proposed for sub-wavelength sound absorption. Among these,
the coiled-up FP26) structure has attracted widespread atten-
tion, which is beneficial for absorber to reduce overall
thickness. Cai et al. designed a coplanar spiral tube with a
thickness of around 1/50 of the resonance wavelength.27) Chen
et al. did a similar study by coiling up two axially coupled
tubes connected with series on a plane.28) Li introduced an
absorber (with the thickness of λ/223) composed of a
perforated plate and coiled coplanar chamber.29) Wu et al.
proposed a hybrid absorber based on micro-perforated panel
and coiled-up channels.30) Until now, Zhu et al. designed a
multi-coiled absorber with the thinnest thickness (13 mm,
λ/527) achieving quasi-perfect absorption at 50 Hz.31) The
above-mentioned absorbers generally could be considered as
the combination of the coiled-FP channels with narrow
entrances. By directly coiling up dead-end FP channels
(without narrow entrances), a series of so-called labyrinthine
structures32–36) were proposed. Near-perfect absorption with
relatively large and tunable bandwidth has been achieved.
However, these absorbers usually require extra absorbing
materials (such as cotton, sponge coating) due to the insuffi-
cient acoustic impedance. When acoustic waves propagating in
a small volume, the viscous friction could cause sound energy
attenuation. Inspired by this, we introduce the micro-slits
(<1 mm) at the sound entrance of absorber owing to its
enough acoustic impedance. Therefore, the combination of
045503-1
nels may be a good candidate for low-frequency sound
absorption.
In this work, we carefully design and investigate a low-
frequency (<500 Hz) sound attenuation absorber based on
micro-slit and space-coiling channels, which exhibits excep-
tional low-frequency absorption performance within deep
sub-wavelength thickness. It possesses flexible frequency-
band adjustability under fixed thickness and the relative
absorption bandwidth could be broadened to 54% by
paralleling two units with different geometry parameters.
The underlying absorption mechanism is revealed by graphi-
cally analyzing the reflection coefficient in the complex
plane.37) Finally, the experiment was carried out to verify
the correctness of the absorber.
2. Theoretical model
The proposed structure consists of micro-slits and space-
coiling channels, wherein the space-coiling channels contain
two parts of the front and back, as illustrated in Figs. 1(a) and
1(b). The propagation path of acoustic waves sketched by the
red dash line, as shown in Fig. 1(c). The acoustic wave can
propagate freely within the space-coiling channel due to the
working wavelength much longer than the cross-section
dimensions of the channels and the effective propagation
length inside the channels is represented by leff. The micro-
slit with width b, thickness t, and the 2D cross-sectional
diagram of the absorber were depicted, as shown in Figs. 1(d)
and 1(e). P denotes the incident wave vector, which points in
the –Z direction.
Here, we employ the impedance theory to derive the
effective surface impedance zs, the absorption coefficient can
be calculated as α = 1 − ǀrǀ2 = 1 − ǀ(zs − z0)/(zs + z0)ǀ2, with
z0 being the characteristic impedance of air. (see supplemen-
tary for more detailed derivations, available online at stacks.
iop.org/JJAP/59/045503/mmedia). First，we employ the
coupled-mode theory (CMT)32,38–40) to reveal the absorbing
mechanism. According to the CMT, the absorption
© 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics
Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 59, 045503 (2020) W. Chen et al.

(corresponding single-slit) is shown in Fig. 2(b). It can be

seen that when the slit-width increases, the proposed system
changes from under-damped state to the critical coupling.
The parameters of the employed cases are listed in Table I
(see supplementary) and the corresponding sound absorption
curve is shown in Fig. 2(c) where the solid lines and dashed
lines denote the results calculated by impedance theory and
CMT, respectively. Moreover, the finite element (FE) simu-
lations were performed using COMSOL, and the numerical
results (circle) agree well with those from impedance theory
and CMT. The above results illustrated the near-perfect
absorption of devised two absorptive systems occurred at
270 Hz, 312 Hz, with the relative bandwidth being 36.5%,
41%, respectively. The total thickness of the structure,
h + t = 30 mm, which is 1/42 and 1/36 of the corresponding
working wavelength, respectively. We also plotted the
distribution of acoustic pressure and velocity at the resonance
frequency (312 Hz) in Fig. 2(d). In the resonance case, the
acoustic pressure is higher at the end of the channel, driving
the air-flows in the channel. The maximum air-flows velocity
occurs among the micro-slits, which denotes by the red
Fig. 1. (Color online) (a)–(b) The absorber is composed of micro-slit and arrows. The intense friction between the acoustic wave and
space-coiling channels (front and back). (c) 3D schematic diagram of the micro-slits causes the incident sound energy is rapidly
absorber, (d) The micro-slit of width b and thickness t. (e) 2D schematic
diagram, the space-coiling channels is formed by immersing partition plates
attenuated.
of thickness b0, the position of slit along the X-axis is marked by T. the width To demonstrate the advantages of introducing micro-slits
of channel wi = [h − (n − 1)b0 − t]/n, n is the folding number, h is the total and space-coiling channels, we conducted the absorption
height of the space-coiling channels. property analysis based on the FE simulation. As shown in
the Fig. 3(a), the peak coefficient (αpeak) for micro-slits
coefficient can be expressed as: (0.3 mm × 6) is 0.99, while the wide-slit (1.8 mm) is only
-1 -1 0.40, which indicated that the absorption coefficient can be
4Q leak Q loss
a = 1 - ∣r∣2 = -1 -1 2
. (1 ) significantly increased by introducing micro-slit. As illu-
4 ( f / fr - 1)2 + (Q leak + Q loss ) strated in Fig. 3(b), the resonance frequency of the absorber
At the resonance frequency ( fr = f ), the absorption coefficient possess space-coiling channels is 312 Hz, while the no space-
-1
of the system is only related to the loss quality factors Qloss and coiling channels absorber is 500 Hz (it is noted that the two
-1
leakage quality factors Qleak. These two quantities could be absorbers have the same volume). Thus it can be seen that the
obtained based on the retrieved method35) with the CFTOOL introducing of space-coiling channels is beneficial for low-
toolkit in MATLAB software package, which provides func- frequency absorption. The above results reveal that excellent
tions for fitting curves to data. (See detailed calculation process low-frequency absorption behavior stems from the effective
in supplement materials). The distribution of sound absorption combination of the above two structures. Furthermore, the
-1 -1
coefficient with varied Qleak and Qloss are shown in Fig. 2(a). It absorber also possesses rich frequency-band adjustability due
-1 -1
can be observed that only when Qleak = Qloss , the sound to the structural features.
absorption coefficient equals 1, the system reaches the critical For adjusting the frequency-band, one direct way is to vary
coupling condition and achieves perfect absorption. When the folding numbers (n) of space-coiling channels. Here, the
-1 -1
Qleak > Qloss , the system is under damped and cannot frequency-band adjustability was researched based on case B.
completely absorb the incident sound waves. When The absorber with different folding numbers (n = 4, 6, 8),
-1 -1
Qleak < Qloss , the system is over damped, resulting in im- and the corresponding absorption coefficient curve is shown
pedance mismatch between the system and air, causing in in Figs. 4(a) and 4(b). One can see that the resonance
some sound wave reflection. In conclusion, the absorptive frequency appears at 312 Hz, 216 Hz, 160 Hz for folding
properties of the absorber can be fully controlled by two numbers n = 4, 6, 8, respectively. The results indicated that
-1 -1
simple parameters (i.e. Qleak and Qloss ) which are dictated by the frequency shifts to low frequencies with increasing
the geometrical properties of the underlying structures. folding numbers (n) under fixed thickness. Significantly,
the adjacent frequency-band span is close to 100 Hz, which
3. Sound absorption performance analysis is considerable for low-frequency absorption adjustment.
-1 -1
To illustrate the absorption characteristics of the proposed Here, the Qleak and Qloss calculated by CMT is 0.06, 0.03,
absorber, we have devised two absorptive systems with 0, 02 and 0.06, 0.07, 0.05, for n = 4, 6, 8, respectively.
-1 -1
single-slit and multi-slits, which are annotated as A and B in Obviously, when n = 6 and 8, the Qleak is less than Qloss ,
Fig. 2(a), and the retrieved loss and leakage factors from indicating that the absorption system is over-damped. This
-1 -1
Eq. (1) are Qleak » Qloss = 0.04, 0.06, respectively. The value can explain why the corresponding absorption coefficient is
-1 -1
of Qleak and Qloss indicates that the devised absorption system less than 1.
nearly satisfies perfect absorption conditions. Here, the Furthermore, another way to achieve frequency-band
-1 -1
relationship between Qleak , Qloss and micro-slit width adjustment under constrained thickness is changing wi to
045503-2 © 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics
Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 59, 045503 (2020) W. Chen et al.

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 2. (Color online) (a) Theoretical absorption distribution at different loss and leakage factors, the dashed line indicates perfect absorption, where A and B
are two cases with loss and leakage factors, respectively. (b) The relationship of loss and leakage factors with geometric parameters of absorber. (c) Absorption
coefficient of the case A (bA = 0.6 mm, pA = 0.98%, single slit), B (bB = 0.3 mm, pb = 2.9%, multi-slits, the number of silt is 6). (d) The distribution of
acoustic pressure and velocity at 312 Hz.

Fig. 3. (Color online) (a) The Absorption coefficient of micro-slits (correspond case B) and wide-slit (1.8 mm). (b) The absorption coefficient of with space-
coiling channels and non-space-coiling channels.

form unequal-sections space-coiling channels. For instance, we
fix w1 + w2 = 18 mm and vary w1, all other parameters are
given in the caption of Fig. 5, and the corresponding absorption
coefficient tuned by adjusting w1 is illustrated in Fig. 5(a). The
near-perfect peak frequency occurred at 137 Hz, 177 Hz, and
210 Hz for w1 = 2, 4, and 9 mm, with relative absorption
bandwidth of 16.8%, 21.0%, and 27.6% respectively. Here the
theoretical (line), numerical (circle) and CMT (dashed) solu-
tions are in good agreement. Compared with the uniform cross-
section (w1 = 9 mm), the resonance frequency clearly shifts to
lower frequency with decreasing w1, while maintaining near-
perfect sound absorption under constraint thickness. To under-
stand the near-perfect sound absorption characteristic, we
compared the relative impedance zs/z0 for different w1.
Generally, perfect absorption indicates a perfect match between
the surface impedance of absorbers and the characteristic
impedance of the surrounding medium (air). It means that the
imaginary parts of the relative impedance are equal to zero,
while the real parts become unity. Imaginary and real parts of
the relative impedance of the absorber are plotted in Figs. 5(b)
and 5(c). When the imaginary parts reach zero at the peak
frequency, corresponding real components are 1.08, 1.15 and
1.47 for w1 = 2, 4, 9 mm. A slight deviation of real parts from
unity here answers for the defective absorption of resonance.
To gain further insight into the mechanism underlying the
absorption, we investigate the reflection coefficient r in

045503-3 © 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 59, 045503 (2020) W. Chen et al.

Fig. 4. (Color online) (a) Absorber with folding numbers n = 4, 6 and 8,
respectively. (b) The absorption coefficient curve with folding numbers
n = 4, 6 and 8, respectively.
complex plane by employing the graphic method. The
distributions of log10∣r∣2 in complex frequency plane for
w1 = 2, 4, 9 mm were plotted in Figs. 5(d) and 5(f).
Generally, in the lossless case, a pair of zero-pole point
appears symmetrically distributed on two sides of the real
axis. Perfect absorption occurs when the zero point reaches
the real axis, and thus, the critical coupling condition met
(The impedance match). For the w1 = 2, 4, 9 mm, their zeros
are close to the real axis and achieve near-perfect absorption
even with a slightly impaired coupling condition.
Furthermore, the distance between the zero and the pole is
positively related to the absorption bandwidth of the
absorber. As shown in Figs. 5(d) and 5(f), the distance
between the zero and the pole increases with increasing w1,
which means a broader bandwidth.
4. Experimental verification
To verify the accuracy of the proposed structure, we
implemented experiments employing the B&K 4206 A im-
pedance tube based on the two-microphone method.41) The
experimental setup for the sound absorption measurement is
shown in Figs. 6(a). Both the sketch of the structure and three
experimental samples are illustrated in Fig. 6(b). The metal
micro-slits panel fabricated by laser and space-coiling
channels fabricated using the photosensitive resin by 3D
printing technology. The detailed parameters of the three
samples are listed in Table II (see supplementary). Samples A
and B is a single absorbing peak structure with different
resonance frequency. And sample C is an integrated unit by
paralleling samples A and B, for broadening the sound
absorbing bandwidth. As shown in Figs. 6(c) and 6(e), the
experimental results are consistent with the theoretical
predictions for three samples. The peak frequency of samples
A, B occurred at 370 Hz and 420 Hz, with the relative
bandwidth being 34%, 39% respectively. And the bandwidth
of sample C is broadened up to 54%. We also plotted the
log10∣r∣2 of the sample C in complex frequency panel, in
which two zeros and poles could be observed, as shown in
Fig. 6(f). There is some deviation between the experimental
and theoretical results of the sample C, which may arises
from the fabrication inaccuracy and manufacturing errors.
5. Conclusion
In summary, a deep sub-wavelength sound absorber based
on micro-slits entrance and space-coiling channels are
proposed, which can efficiently absorb the incident acoustic
wave energy at low-frequency. We revealed that the low-

Fig. 5. (Color online) (a) Absorption coefficient of w1 = 2, 4, and 9 mm, the dimension of the structure is L = 60 mm, m = 22 mm, a = 10 mm, T = 2 mm,
b0 = 1 mm, n = 3, w3 = 9 mm, h = 30 mm, t = 0.5 mm, b = 0.3 mm and the number of micro-slit is 5. (b)–(c) Imaginary parts and real parts of relative
impedance. The arrows indicate the position of the absorption peak frequency. (d)–(f) Reflection coefficient in complex frequency planes for w1 = 2, 4, and
9 mm, respectively.

045503-4 © 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 59, 045503 (2020) W. Chen et al.

Fig. 6. (Color online) (a) Schematic diagram of the experimental setup. (b) Experiment samples A, B and C, sample A (multi slits, d = 0.3 mm, the number of
silt is 4, pA = 2.6%), sample B (single slit, d = 0.5 mm, pB = 1.1%); sample C is an integrated structure of sample A and B; (c)–(e) Experimental and
simulation results of the three samples; (f) log10∣r∣2 in the complex frequency plane for the sample C.

frequency absorbing is mainly caused by the friction losses ORCID iDs

of acoustic waves in micro-slits. The absorber meets deep
sub-wavelength thickness and possesses rich adjustability
and the relative absorption bandwidth could be broadened
up 54% by paralleling two units with different parameters.
The above low-frequency absorbing characteristics were
demonstrated analytically, numerically and experimentally.
Due to the effective low-frequency sound-absorbing, deep
sub-wavelength thickness, broadband performance, and
easy fabrication, the proposed absorber has wide potential
applications in noise control engineering.
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by Central University Fund (Grant No.
XDJK2020B020), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
(Grant No. 2018M643827) and the National Nature Science
Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11702226, 1875569 and
51775549).
Lingyun Yao https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3300-6906
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