Acoustic cloak with duplex communication ability constructed by multilayered homogeneous isotropic materials

Based on the effective medium theory, we propose a practical implementation of a cylindrical acoustic cloak with a concentric alternating multilayered structure of homogeneous isotropic materials, which can perfectly mimic the ideal radius-dependent and anisotropic ordinary lens cloak. The proposal exhibits near-ideal cloaking performance such as low-scattering and shadow-reducing in a wide frequency range, thus it can hide an object from the detection of acoustic waves. The acoustic wave can pass through the cloaking shell with an unchanged wavefront shape, which endues the cloaked object with duplex communication ability. More simulations on the acoustic far-field scattering patterns and the total scattering cross-section are performed to investigate the layer number and the frequency dependence of the cloaking effect, and the results show that the thinner layers exhibit a better cloaking effect. The proposal may significantly facilitate the experimental demonstration of the acoustic cloak.     

Acoustic cloaking by a superlens with single-negative materials

We propose a specific transformation in cloaking to make an acoustic sensor undetectable, in which the cloaking shell consists of complementary media with single-negative acoustic parameters instead of double-negative ones, and is proved to be a magnifying superlens. Moreover, the acoustical parameters of the cloak are completely independent of those of the host material as well as the cloaked object. This may significantly facilitate the experimental realization of acoustic cloaks and is of fundamental importance in a wide range of acoustics, optics, and engineering applications.     

隐声衣结构设计和实验研究新进展

隐声衣是一项使物体隐藏于声场的新技术,与传统吸声方式相比,隐声衣消除回波时不会在目标背后留下声影区。隐声衣的物理实现是重点研究方向之一,利用具有特殊性质的材料或结构消除散射是获得隐声效果的主要途径。文章综述了隐声衣研究在结构设计和实验方面的几项新发展。包括基于超常材料的隐声衣、基于温度递度的隐声衣、应用反演设计方法的隐声衣、有源隐声衣等,主要介绍隐声衣机理和结构设计方面的新思想,以及新型人工材料和人工结构在隐声衣研究中的应用。     

基于各向同性材料的层状椭圆柱形声隐身衣设计

基于等效介质理论, 提出了具有共焦层状结构的椭圆柱形声隐身衣设计方法. 理论分析与有限元数值模拟表明, 所设计隐身衣依然具有完美隐身衣典型特征, 可使刚性圆柱体散射场明显减小, 并且在隐身衣区域表现出波阵面弯曲的特性, 同时在隐身衣外部波阵面保持不变. 增加隐身衣离散层数可以拓宽其有效工作频带, 改善隐身效果. 由于是一种线变换隐身衣, 隐身效果受到了入射波方向的影响, 只有当入射波方向与椭圆长轴平行时效果最佳. 另外当椭圆柱焦距非常小的时候, 可近似认为是圆柱形隐身衣. 仿真实验结果证明了方法的正确性. 该研究为实现复杂形状声隐身衣提供了一种有效途径.     

A revisit to imperfect acoustic cloak of multi-layered shell structures considering sound speed and impedance matching

An imperfect multi-layered acoustic cloak is proposed for a two-dimensional cloaking zone based on feasible material properties. In this model, the matching of sound speed and acoustic impedance has been investigated, and the effects of material and geometric properties on the imperfect cloak have been studied for better design of the imperfect cloak. The imperfect cloak could be improved using appropriate changes in the design parameters. By increasing the thickness of the high density layer and with some changes in the sound speeds between the high density and the low density layers, the imperfect cloaking model showed better cloaking performance than Cummer–Schurig cloak. Also, present results show that the sound speed matching is more important for acoustic cloaking than the impedance matching. These results can be applied as a practical design guide for two-dimensional cloaks using multilayered structures composed of naturally existing materials.     

基于主动声学超材料的圆柱声隐身斗篷设计研究

基于多层复合材料结构的二维声隐身斗篷设计思想, 利用主动隔膜声学空腔有效密度可以任意控制这一特性, 设计了主动声学超材料下的无限长圆柱声隐身斗篷. 给出了主动隔膜声学空腔单元的声电元件类比模拟电路图和具体的有效密度控制方法. 进行了主动声学超材料声隐身斗篷的结构建模, 并对平面入射波入射下此圆柱隐身斗篷周围声压分布场进行仿真计算. 结果表明, 平面波在一定频率范围内可以毫无阻碍地透过圆柱斗篷, 似乎不存在这种障碍物, 达到声隐身效果. 同时, 计算了主动声材料斗篷下总散射截面随频率变化曲线, 研究了此斗篷隐身效果随频率的变化特性. 本文从主动控制角度探讨实验实现隐身斗篷的技术问题, 有望给声隐身斗篷实验设计提供一条新的技术途径.     

Impedance-Matched Reduced Acoustic Cloaking with Realizable Mass and Its Layered Design

We present an impedance-matched reduced version of acoustic cloaking whose mass is in a reasonable range. A layered cloak design with isotropic material is also proposed for the reduced cloak. Numerical calculations from the transfer matrix methods show that the present layered cloak can reduce the scattering of an air cylinder substantially.     

Three dimensional multilayered acoustic cloak with homogeneous isotropic materials

A three-dimensional (3D) spherical acoustic cloak is designed using an acoustic layered system, which can hide an object from the detection of acoustic wave in arbitrary direction. The cloak is constructed from multilayered concentric spherical shells filled with homogeneous isotropic materials. Based on spherical wave expansion method, we confirm that significant low-reflection, acoustic-shadow-reducing, and wavefront-bending effects in 3D space can be achieved by the proposed cloak. The angle distribution of the scattered wave is further evaluated by the far-field scattering pattern. In addition, the cloak is demonstrated to work efficiently in a wide bandwidth in which the cloaking efficiency decreases with increasing frequency. This study may be helpful to design high-performance 3D acoustic cloaks for broadband acoustic waves in all incidence directions.     

An integral equation approach to acoustic cloaking

The paper presents an original boundary integral equation (BIE) formulation for the analysis of the acoustic cloaking of a scatterer. The advantage of such an approach is the lower computational burden, especially when the analysis of a large portion of the hosting domain is required. The partial differential equation governing the propagation inside the cloak is recast in the form of non-homogeneous wave equation, with field sources depending on the mechanical properties of the cloak. The boundary integral formulation is derived using the standard procedure. The boundary element method (BEM) is used to derive the matrix transfer function of the cloak. The latter is applied to the incident field at the cloak's outer boundary to obtain the total field at arbitrary locations in the host. The formulation is applied to the simple case of a radially symmetric cloak embedding a circular obstacle. Numerical results are presented for sound-hard and sound-soft obstacles, including a study of the cloaking efficiency as a function of the frequency.     

Cloaking an acoustic sensor with single-negative materials

In this review, a brief introduction is given to the development of acoustic superlens cloaks that allow the cloaked object to receive signals while its presence is not sensed by the surrounding, which can be regarded as “cloaking an acoustic sensor”. Remarkably, the designed cloak consists of single-negative materials with parameters independent of the background medium or the sensor system, which is proven to be a magnifying superlens. This has facilitated significantly the design and fabrication of acoustic cloaks that generally require double-negative materials with customized parameters. Such innovative design has then been simplified further as a multi-layered structure comprising of two alternately arranged complementary media with homogeneous isotropic single-negative materials. Based on this, a scattering analyses method is developed for the numerical simulation of such multi-layered cloak structures, which may serve as an efficient approach for the investigation on such devices.     

Cancellation of acoustic scattering from an elastic sphere

Recent research has suggested the possibility of creating acoustic cloaks using metamaterial layers to eliminate the acoustic field scattered from an elastic object. This paper explores the possibility of applying the scattering cancellation cloaking technique to acoustic waves and the use of this method to investigate its effectiveness in cloaking elastic and fluid spheres using only a single isotropic elastic layer. Parametric studies showing the influence of cloak stiffness and geometry on the frequency dependent scattering cross-section of spheres have been developed to explore the design space of the cloaking layer. This analysis shows that an appropriately designed single isotropic elastic cloaking layer can provide up to 30 dB of scattering reduction for ka values up to 1.6. This work also illustrates the importance of accounting for the elasticity of the object and the relevant limitations of simplistic quasi-static analyses proposed in recent papers.     

Finite-element modeling of an acoustic cloak for three-dimensional flexible shells with structural excitation

A finite-element model for three-dimensional acoustic cloaks in both cylindrical and spherical coordinates is presented. The model is developed through time-harmonic analysis to study pressure and velocity field distributions as well as the cloak’s performance. The model developed accounts for the fluid-structure interaction of thin fluid-loaded shells. A plane strain model is used for the thin shell. Mechanical harmonic excitation is applied to the fluid-loaded shell to investigate the effect of mechanical oscillation of the shell on the performance of the acoustic cloak. In developing this model, a deeper insight into the acoustic cloak phenomena presented by Cummer and Shurig in 2007 is presented. Different nonlinear coordinate transformations are presented to study their effect on the acoustic cloak performance.     

Examination of the Thermal Cloaking Effectiveness with Layered Engineering Materials

The concentrically layered thermal cloaks with isotropic materials could realize the equivalent thermal cloaking effect with Pendry's cloak,while the effectiveness is scarcely investigated quantitatively.Here we examine the cloaking effectiveness quantitatively by evaluating the standard deviation of the temperature difference between the simulated plane with the layered thermal cloak and Pendry's thermal cloak.The design rules for the isotropic materials in terms of thermal conductivity and layer thickness are presented.The present method could quantitatively evaluate the cloaking effectiveness,and could open avenues for analyzing the cloaking effect,detecting the(anti-) cloaks,etc.     

Construction and mechanism analysis on nanoscale thermal cloak by in-situ annealing silicon carbide film

In recent years,there is a strong interest in thermal cloaking at the nanoscale,which has been achieved by using graphene and crystalline silicon films to build the nanoscale thermal cloak according to the classical macroscopic thermal cloak model.Silicon carbide,as a representative of the third-generation semiconductor material,has splendid properties,such as the high thermal conductivity and the high wear resistance.Therefore,in the present study,we build a nanoscale thermal cloak based on silicon carbide.The cloaking performance and the perturbation of the functional area to the external temperature filed are analyzed by the ratio of thermal cloaking and the response temperature,respectively.It is demonstrated that silicon carbide can also be used to build the nanoscale thermal cloak.Besides,we explore the influence of inner and outer radius on cloaking performance.Finally,the potential mechanism of the designed nanoscale thermal cloak is investigated by calculating and analyzing the phonon density of states(PDOS)and mode participation rate(MPR)within the structure.We find that the main reason for the decrease in the thermal conductivity of the functional area is phonon localization.This study extends the preparation method of nanoscale thermal cloaks and can provide a reference for the development of other nanoscale devices.     

圆柱形分层五模材料声学隐身衣的理论与数值分析

声学隐身衣物性参数分布的连续对制备造成了很大困难, 需要采用分层的方法进行近似. 研究分层对隐身衣性能的影响具有重要意义. 本文首先推导了圆柱形分层声学隐身衣散射声压场的理论解, 然后通过数值算例验证了理论推导的正确性, 最后针对层数、层厚分布对隐身衣性能的影响进行了计算研究. 结果表明, 选取恰当的层数和层厚分布可在不增加制备难度的同时改善隐身衣性能.     

While rotating while cloaking

Invisible optical and thermal cloaking have been explored as the typical demonstrations of the transformation optics and thermotics theory. However, the existing cloaks are realized by only one-coordinate transformation, and the cloaking layout, i.e. the form of electromagnetic wave/heat passing around the invisible region, is single for a long time. Here, we propose a new rotated thermal cloak which can unify the conventional cloaking and rotating together, and realize the while-rotating–while-cloaking effect. The required anisotropic thermal conductivity tensor is deduced from the new geometric mapping. Though rotated, the heat flux can be tuned around the central invisible region perfectly by the proposed rotated thermal cloak. The underlying physics is explored by comprehensive analysis of the distribution of the thermal conductivity tensor, which is further compared with those of the conventional cloak and rotator. The experimental feasibility is also discussed by validating the practical while-rotating–while-cloaking effect through a proof-of-concept design. The proposed rotated thermal cloak is expected to extend the possibility of cloaking scheme, and open avenues for the multiple coordinate transformation in counterpart physical fields, like optics, electrics, acoustics, magnetics, mechanics, etc.     

一种适用于对称截面的主动式热斗篷的研究

直接求解导热方程对具有自适应热源的可控式热隐身技术进行数值研究，探索热流控制方法及隐身效果，推导出均匀背景下二维对称截面热斗篷热隐身区域自适应热源分布的通解.仿真结果表明：对于任意对称截面斗篷，自适应热源都能使得扰动后的温度场很好地恢复到背景温度场，达到热隐身的目的.     

Scattering theory derivation of a 3D acoustic cloaking shell

Through acoustic scattering theory we derive the mass density and bulk modulus of a spherical shell that can eliminate scattering from an arbitrary object in the interior of the shell--in other words, a 3D acoustic cloaking shell. Calculations confirm that the pressure and velocity fields are smoothly bent and excluded from the central region as for previously reported electromagnetic cloaking shells. The shell requires an anisotropic mass density with principal axes in the spherical coordinate directions and a radially dependent bulk modulus. The existence of this 3D cloaking shell indicates that such reflectionless solutions may also exist for other wave systems that are not isomorphic with electromagnetics.     

Achieving acoustic cloak by using compressible background flow

We propose a scheme of acoustic spherical cloaking by means of background irrotational flow in compressible fluid.The background flow forms a virtual curved spacetime and directs the sound waves to bypass the cloaked objects. To satisfy the laws of real fluid, we show that spatially distributed mass source and momentum source are necessary to supply. The propagation of sound waves in this system is studied via both geometric acoustics approximation and full wave approach.The analytic solution of sound fields is obtained for plane wave incidence. The results reveal the effect of phase retardation(or lead) in comparison with the ordinary transformation-acoustic cloak. In addition, the ability of cloaking is also evaluated for unideal background flows by analyzing the scattering cross section.     

Bandwidth enhancement of transformation optics-based cloak with reduced parameters

In this paper, dispersive cloak design with broad bandwidth and minimal scattering cross section is proposed by appropriately selecting a radial permeability for each shell in a discretized reduced cloak. The dispersive medium is constructed by artificially varying the inner radius of the cloak with frequency, and this variation results into unique material properties at every frequency. The variation of inner radius of the cloak with frequency is artificial since the actual physical dimension of inner radius remains invariant. The relation between bandwidth and geometrical parameters of cloak is obtained by ensuring that transformation media must satisfy the condition that group velocity must remain less than the speed of light along every direction for a finite frequency range. The proposed cloak provides \(8.9\,\%\) bandwidth with respect to the center frequency for \(50\,\%\) reduction in total scattering cross section, and at the design frequency, the minimum scattering cross section obtained is \(0.266\). The proposed dispersive cloak design is verified by numerical full-wave simulations results which also confirm good cloaking performance.