Optimal porous media designs through

parametric studies
Abhilash Sreekumar
Februrary 2021

Contents
1 Mixed displacement-pressure formulation for poro-elastic me-
dia 3

2 Parameter modelling 3

3 Supports 4

4 Excitations 5

5 Multilayer configurations 5

6 Mesoscale inclusions 6

7 Transient and stochastic excitations 6

8 Sampling strategies 6

9 Sensitivity Analysis 8

10 Suggested design scenarios 10

10.1 Step 1 - Excitations and boundary conditions . . . . . . . . . . . 10
10.2 Step 2 - Mesoscale perforation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

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Parameter Description Value Units
σs in-vacuo stress tensor N · m−2
εs infinitesimal strain tensor -
E Young’s modulus N · m−2
ν Poisson’s ratio -
ηs (ω) structural loss factor -
D̃ elastic constitutive tensor N · m−2
ρ̃ modified Biot density kg · m−3
ρ̃eq dynamic mass density kg · m−3
k̃eq dynamic bulk modulus N · m−2
γ̃ coupling factor -
ω angular frequency rad · s−1
φ porosity -
ρs solid skeleton-material density kg · m−3
ρ0 air density at rest 1.2042 kg · m−3
ρ1 solid skeleton-frame density kg · m−3
Kb porous skeleton bulk modulus at constant pressure N · m−2
Ks solid skeleton-material bulk modulus N · m−2
Kf fluid bulk modulus N · m−2
σ static airflow resistivity N · s · m−4
α∞ high frequency limit of dynamic tortuosity −
Λ viscous characteristic length m
Λ0 thermal characteristic length m
k00 static thermal permeability m2
cair speed of sound in air 343.377 m · s−1
zair impedance of air 413.4807 kg · m−2 · s−1
P0 atmospheric pressure 101,325 N · m−2
Cp specific heat of fluid at constant pressure 1.0024 × 103 J · kg −1
η dynamic viscosity 1.8214 × 10−5 N · s · m−2
γ adiabatic index 1.4012 −
α sound absorption coefficient -
T sound transmission loss coefficient -
κ thermal conductivity 0.0257 W · m−1 · K −1
k wave number of acoustic excitation m−1

Table 1: Material parameters used in the Biot u − p formulation.

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1 Mixed displacement-pressure formulation for
poro-elastic media
The governing equations for acoustic wave propagation through a poroelastic
medium is described by the Biot (u-p) formulation:

div(σ s ) + ω 2 ρ̃u = −γ̃∇p (1a)

∆p p
+ ω2 = ω 2 γ̃div(u) (1b)
ρ̃eq K̃eq

where u denotes the displacements of the solid skeleton and p, the pore-fluid
pressure. These equations are rearranged and mapped to the time domain via
an inverse Fourier transform:
   
K̃ − ω 2 M̃ − C̃ + S̃
   u
    û = fp (2)
−ω 2 C̃T + S̃T H̃ + jω Ã − ω 2 Q̃ p̂ f ,

All material parameters involved in this formalism are given in Table 1.

2 Parameter modelling

Figure 1: Flowchart describing the material parameters involved

The computation of model parameters from the physical parameters is shown

in Fig. 1. The four elastic skeleton parameters and six porous media macroscopic
parameters completely characterize a poroelastic media.

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3 Supports

Figure 2: Impedance tube configuration

Fig. 2 illustrates a classical impedance tube configuration. A poroelastic ma-

terial (PE) is placed inside and has roller supports on lateral edges (known in
acoustic literature as sliding boundaries). Impedance tube experimental setups
for a sample of lateral dimension L and thickness h typically consider L >> h.
As it is not possible to model infinite/semi-infinite domains with traditional
methods like FEA, one requires a periodic Floquet-Bloch constraint. This con-
dition imposes equality of pressures and normal velocities of the pore-fluid and
the normal displacements of the solid skeleton between lateral faces Γ2 and Γ4 .
Alternately, the roller supports shown in the figure behave as good approxima-
tions to this periodic boundary condition requirement, especially in situations
where no wave reflection is expected off the lateral faces.
Two kinds of boundary conditions are considered for the rear face Γ3 . The
first is a clamped support (known in acoustical literature as rigid backing) and is
interpreted as a sample with an infinitely rigid and motionless plate for support.
In this case, the phenomena observed are restricted to absorption and reflection
only. This is the configuration used in studying the sound absorption behaviour
of a material. This is enforced as:

u = 0 on Γu , on Γ3 , (3)

This is experimentally studied through recording loudness levels at two points

within the impedance tube, using microphones.
The second support is a Robin type boundary condition. This is a combina-
tion of Dirichlet and Neumann boundaries and is called an impedance boundary
condition in acoustical literature. It is interpreted as an anechoic termination,
i.e., the impedance at Γ3 should be equal to the impedance of the surrounding
medium, i.e. air. This is done mathematically as

z(θ)∇p · n + jω ρ̃eq p = 0 on Γ3 , (4)

where z(θ) = zair /cos(θ) where θ denotes the angle of incidence of an incoming
excitation source with the incident face.

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 The term ”anechoic termination” might be a little misleading, as an ane-
choic wedge allows for a gradual variation in impedance, to minimize reflection.
However, in this Robin boundary, reflections can and will occur at Γ3 due to
a sudden impedance mismatch. This is physical. This configuration is used to
study sound transmission behaviour of a material.
This is done experimentally by recording the loudness levels at one point
within the tube and a second point outside the tube, i.e. to the right of Γ3 .

4 Excitations

Figure 3: A plane wave incident at angle θ . Taken from Edwin Reynders,

KU Leuven, Department of Civil Engineering, No2Noise short course December
2019

In our work so far, we consider only plane wave excitations. This is an

acceptable approximation, as more realistic acoustic sources, such as spherical
wavefronts, can be decomposed into a series of plane waves. This is imposed on
Γ1 as a Dirichlet pressure boundary condition:

p = p̄e−jk·x on Γ1 , (5)

This is illustrated in Fig. 3.

A second excitation type, called a Diffuse-field excitation is composed of
several plane waves incident at different angles θ ∈ [−π/2, π/2]. The net ab-
sorption/transmission behaviour is computed in a statistical sense, i.e., a mean
of the responses for each angle of incidence.

5 Multilayer configurations
Poroelastic materials generally exhibit reduced sound absorption properties at
low excitation frequencies. This is due to a mismatch between the sample thick-
ness and large wavelengths encountered at these frequencies. Multilayer systems

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are often deployed to improve the low frequency behaviour. Similarly, multi-
layer configurations are also designed to improve sound transmission properties
as well. An example configuration is illustrated in Fig. 4.

Figure 4: A multilayer configuration designed to improve sound transmission

loss

The number of layers used and the material constituting each layer is critical
in optimizing absorption and transmission behaviour under different excitation
and support conditions. This is the primary objective of Vivek’s work in [2].

6 Mesoscale inclusions
Alternative solutions to remedy the above limitations of porous media are ex-
plored in the form of double porosity materials, porous composites and em-
bedded inclusions. An example of a rigid porous media with infinitely rigid
cylindrical inclusions is shown in Fig. 5.
The location, size, number and material of the inclusions can significantly
alter the performance of the material. This has been studied in [1].

7 Transient and stochastic excitations

The amplitude, phase and angle of incidence of the acoustic excitation may
vary with time. Alternately, the excitation can be a time varying stochastic
excitation, such as white noise. These problems necessitates a time domain
analysis of the sample being studied. This can be achieved using the fractional
calculus based approach developed by us.
Based on the previous sections, possible parameters are provided in Table 2.

8 Sampling strategies
Brute forcing through different samples in the design domain proves prohibitively
n
expensive, since the complexity is O(ns p ) where np denotes the total number of

6
Figure 5: A 2 cm thick domain with a single infinitely rigid circular inclusion
of radius 7.5 mm, per unit cell. Unit cell repeats periodically in the vertical
direction with period 2 cm.

parameters considered and ns denotes the average number of samples used for
each parameter.
Naive random sampling (Monte-Carlo (MC)) is one potential remedy. This
requires fitting a probability density function (PDF) over the input parameter
space and generating random samples from this. A potential drawback to this
approach lies in the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) and Strong Law of Large
Numbers. These suggest that a large number of samples are necessary to be
sufficiently representative of the input space.
Alternately, stratified sampling can significantly reduce the number of sam-
ples required by partitioning the search space into nw equal sized windows.
This guarantees that samples are selected from all regions in the search space,
without having to rely on Strong Law of Large Numbers. For multi-parameter
spaces, the Latin Hypercube (LHC) method is a popular stratified sampling
strategy.
The MC and LHC strategies are explored on the search space defined in Ta-
ble 3. An additional dependent parameter k00 = φΛ02 /8, i.e., the static thermal
permeability is also considered.
A uniform PDF is assumed over the entire space as all input combinations
are equally likely. The RMS value of Sound Absorption Coefficient (SAC), i.e.,
αRMS is computed. The evolution of E[αRMS ] with the number of samples ns
is shown in Fig. 7. The convergence of relative error norms with ns is provided
in Fig. 7.
Fig. 7 shows that the MC and LHC1 require ≈ 1000 samples to converge.
This is expected as LHC1 with a single window is equivalent to naive MC.

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 Parameter Vary 1 Vary 2
Material 4 Elastic 6 Porous acoustic
1
parameters parameters parameters
Rigid backing
2 Supports
Anechoic termination
Harmonic
Incident angles
3 Excitation Time varying
Diffuse field
Stochastic
4 Multilayer Number of layers Material of each layer
Rigid
Size
Porous
5 Mesoscale inclusion Location
Air
Periodicity/Aperiodic
Elastic

Table 2: Summary of parameters to be investigated

Parameter Min. Max.

1 σ 102 106
2 φ 0.1 0.99
3 α∞ 1 3
4 λ 10−6 10−3
5 λ0 10−6 10−3
6 ρs 1 500
7 E 103 109
8 ν 0.1 0.45
9 ηs 0.1 0.9

Table 3: Chosen range for input parameters

Conversely, LHC5 - LHC100 appear to converge uniformly with ≈ 100 samples.

Since computational cost associated with all six approaches are equivalent (I
have recorded their times), one should prefer a LHC strategy with fine windows,
to achieve improved convergence.

9 Sensitivity Analysis
Now that the sampling method to be chosen has been determined, we proceed
with a global sensitivity analysis. Here the sensitivity of the objective function,
i.e., αrms with respect to the input parameters in Table 3 is determined. There
are many ways to quantify these sensitivities. The approach we adopt is the
Elementary Effect method. Let the input parameters be considered as stochastic
processes xk , 1 ≤ k ≤ np where np = 10 denotes the number of parameters
considered. Then the elementary sensitivity at instant tj , (∂αrms /∂xi )tj of αrms

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Figure 6: Evolution of E[αRMS ] with the number of samples ns . The LHC
sampling is performed with nw = 1, 5, 10, 50, 100.

with respect to the ith parameter is calculated as follows

 ∂α
rms
 αrms (x1 (tj ), . . . , xi (tj+1 ), . . . xk (tj )) − αrms (x1 (tj ), . . . , xi (tj ), . . . xk (tj ))
= ,
∂xi tj ∆
1 ≤ i ≤ k, 1 ≤ j ≤ ns
(6)
where ns denotes the number of samples. The term ∆ represents normalized
local perturbations in the relevant variable xi (tj ) and is derived

xi (tj+1 ) − xi (tj )
∆= ,
|xmax
i − xmin
i |

where xmax
i and xmin
i are the upper and lower bounds of the theoretical distri-
bution (see Table 3). The following statistical moments can now be obtained
 ∂α 
rms
Mean: µi (tj ) = E[ ] 1 ≤ l ≤ j, (7a)
∂xi tj
 ∂α 2  ∂α 
rms rms
Variance: σi2 (tj ) = E[ ] − E[ ]2 1 ≤ l ≤ j, (7b)
∂xi tj ∂xi tj

Derivative quantities like the absolute mean µ∗i (tj ) = |µi (tj )|, coefficients
of variation CVi (tj ) = σi (tj )/µi (tj ) and CVi∗ (tj ) = σi (tj )/µ∗i (tj ) also provide
useful insights into the behaviour of the problem. The evolution of CVi∗ (tj )
with number of samples is shown in Fig. 8. All metrics appear to have reason-
ably converged to a steady state value. Using the CLT, we should expect that

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 ns +1 ns ns
Figure 7: Evolution of relative errors (E[αRMS ] − E[αRMS ])/E[αRMS ] with the
number of samples ns .

 
∂αrms
for i.i.d. samples, the sensitivity measure ∂xi should eventually reach a
stationary normal distribution with mean µ̂i and variance σ̂i2 . These quantities
are provided in Table 4.
There is a hidden caveat in this analysis. Unfortunately I miss accounting
for the constraints Λ ≤ Λ0 . I believe it is for this reason that some of the
statistics look odd, for e.g., µ̂4 = 7.4114, i.e., the mean for sensitivity of αrms
with respect to Λ is far greater than µ̂5 = 0.0217, i.e., with respect to Λ0 . The
similar patter is observed for the corresponding variances as well. I am not sure
if this is reasonable to expect.

10 Suggested design scenarios

AS2JN: Apologies in advance for the informal style in this section.
After discussing and finalizing with you, I will redo in more formal
style.

10.1 Step 1 - Excitations and boundary conditions

The current sensitivity analysis is done only for normal incidence acoustic waves.
The industry standard however, is the SAC computed for a diffuse field. That
is, SAC is computed for multiple angles of incidence in [−π/2, π/2] range and
averaged. Since I already have code ready to do this, it should be very straight-
forward.

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Figure 8: Evolution of coefficient of variation CVi∗ (tj ) with number of samples
tj , 1 ≤ j ≤ ns where ns = 1000.

Two design scenarios can be identified here concerning the rear boundary
conditions. 1. Rigid backing - this is an absorption problem and so the SAC dif-
fuse field would be the best objective function for this. 2. Anechoic termination
- this is a transmission problem. For this we will need the Sound Transmission
Loss (STL) coefficient diffuse field as a design objective.

10.2 Step 2 - Mesoscale perforation

First thing to do here is figure out how to add a volume constraint. Else I am
afraid that we might get trivial results, like the SAC is best for zero mesoscale
porosity etc.
Next, these perforations need to be parametrized. This includes a) number
of perforations, b) location of each perforation, c) shape, d) diameter. To keep
things simple, we can start with a uniform distribution of circular mesoscale
pores. Here all we have to do is define i) perforation rate, and ii) perforation
diameter. For this I prepare a set of pre-initialized meshes and pick from these. I
do some random LHC sampling to tell me what perforation rates and diameters
we need.
A next step would be to factor in b) the location of each perforation. I have
a random field generator that generates spatially varying random fields. Maybe
I can use this to tell me where I can try/sample each perforation somehow.
I have yet to concretize further options. I will think about this more deeply
and add them in.

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 i µ̂i σ̂i2
1 0.6067 19.2902
2 0.4014 0.0632
3 -0.1022 0.0088
4 7.4114 195.0594
5 0.0217 0.0291
6 6.7911 930.4411
7 -0.0533 0.018
8 -5.7581 2.8138 × 103
9 -0.0027 2.0288 × 10−4
10 -0.0012 1.6935 × 10−4

Table 4: Steady state means and variances of sensitivity measures with respect
to each input parameter.

References
[1] Groby, J.-P., Dazel, O., Duclos, A., Boeckx, L. and Kelders, L. [2011],
‘Enhancing the absorption coefficient of a backed rigid frame porous layer
by embedding circular periodic inclusions’, The Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America 130(6), 3771–3780.
[2] Ramamoorthy, V. T., Özcan, E., Parkes, A. J., Luc, J. and Bécot, F.-
X. [2019], ‘Metaheuristic optimisation of sound absorption performance of
multilayered porous materials’.

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