Fabrication and characterization of 3D printed thin plates for acoustic metamaterials applications

This paper presents a 3D printing technique based on stereolithography and direct light processing for the fabrication of low resonance frequency thin plates suitable for acoustic metamaterials applications. It was possible to achieve a better resolution with respect to other 3D printing methods such as fusion deposition modeling and to obtain plates with a thickness of 70 μm. The plates were characterized using three different methods: laser Doppler vibrometer supported by modal analysis, impedance tube measurements backed by a transfer matrix model and nanoindentation. All results are in good agreement. The physical parameters retrieved through the characterization methods can be used for future designs and integrated into finite element analysis to better predict the noise impact of these materials. Thanks to the small radius and thickness of the plates presented in this paper and to their low resonance frequency, it is suggested that they could be arranged in various configurations and used as unit cells in acoustic metamaterials applications for noise attenuation in small-scale electroacoustic devices.