A modal approach for the efficient analysis of a bionic multi-layer sound absorption structure

The interest of this article lies in the proposition of using bionic method to develop a new sound absorber and analyze the efficient of this absorber in a ski cabin. Inspired by the coupling absorption structure of the skin and feather of a typical silent flying bird — owl, a bionic coupling multi-layer structure model is developed, which is composed of a micro-silt plate, porous fibrous material and a flexible micro-perforated membrane backed with airspace. The finite element simulation method with ACTRAN is applied to calculate the acoustic performance of the multi-layer absorber, the vibration modal of the ski cabin and the sound pressure level (SPL) near the skier's ears before and after pasting the absorber at the flour carpet and seats in the cabin. As expected, the SPL near the ears was significantly reduced after adding sound-absorbing material. Among them, the model 2 and model 5 showed the best sound absorption efficiency and the SPL almost reduced 5 dB. Moreover, it was most effctive for the SPL reduction with full admittance configuration at both the carpet and the seats, and the carpet contribution seems to be predominant.