Lattice Boltzmann Method for Designing cellular solids for effective acoustic noise cancellation*

Acoustic technology based on Passive Noise Cancellation (PNC) has emerged as an excellent noise reduction strategy for both small and large environments. In general, PNC primarily focuses on designing specialty cellular materials, that can effectively attenuate unwanted sounds by virtue of its intrinsic morphology. Here, we design sound-absorbing materials and establish that by tailoring their morphological features, we can achieve acoustic noise cancellation, effectively. Our approach harnesses Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) to simulate sound propagation in two-phase cellular viscoelastic materials and our simulation results are in good agreement with the analytical calculations. In particular, using LBM, we designed various morphologies for cellular viscoelastic solids and demonstrate that the higher frequency waves attenuate faster compared to lower frequency waves. Further, we extend our approach for designing indoor acoustics and use reverberation time to quantify PNC for these systems. Our findings can be used not only to design miniaturized noise-canceling acoustic gadgets but also to design specific sound-absorbing materials for large indoor systems.