Sound absorption of a rib-stiffened plate covered by anechoic coatings

Underwater vehicles are often equipped with anechoic coatings to absorb the sound waves of active sonar and attenuate the noise emitted from the vessels. Rubber layers with periodically distributed air cavities are widely used as anechoic coatings. In this paper, the sound absorption of anechoic coatings embedded with doubly periodic cavities and backed with periodically rib-stiffened plates is investigated using a finite element method (FEM) with Bloch-periodic boundary conditions. Numerical results given by the FEM are compared with those of a simplified transfer impedance approach to explain the shifting of the main absorption peak. Further a simplified FEM approach, which reduces calculation time significantly and maintains the reasonable accuracy, is proposed for a comparison. The results indicate that the plate and the ribs can have significant impacts on the absorption performance of anechoic coatings, especially at low frequencies.