Modeling and Characterization of a Novel Porous Metallic Foam Inside Ducts

A novel porous metallic foam has been studied in this work. This composite material is a mixture of resin and hollow spheres. It is lightweight, highly resistive to contamination and heat, and is capable of providing similar or better sound absorption compared to the conventional porous absorbers, but with a robust and less degradable properties. Several configurations of the material have been tested inside an expansion chamber with spatially periodic area changes. Bragg scattering was observed in some configurations with certain lattice constants. The acoustic properties of this material have been characterized from the measurement of the two-port matrix across a cylindrical sample. The complex density and speed of sound can be extracted from the transfer matrix using an optimization technique. Several models were developed to validate the effect of this metallic foam using Finite Elements and the Two-port Theory. There was a good agreement between both models and the measurement results.