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PRL 106, 024301 (2011) PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 14 JANUARY 2011

Broadband Acoustic Cloak for Ultrasound Waves

Shu Zhang, Chunguang Xia, and Nicholas Fang*
Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering and the Beckman Institute of Advanced Science and Technology,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois 61801, USA
(Received 12 September 2010; revised manuscript received 9 November 2010; published 10 January 2011)
Invisibility devices based on coordinate transformation have opened up a new field of considerable
interest. We present here the first practical realization of a low-loss and broadband acoustic cloak for
underwater ultrasound. This metamaterial cloak is constructed with a network of acoustic circuit
elements, namely, serial inductors and shunt capacitors. Our experiment clearly shows that the acoustic
cloak can effectively bend the ultrasound waves around the hidden object, with reduced scattering and
shadow. Because of the nonresonant nature of the building elements, this low-loss (
6 dB=m) cylindrical
cloak exhibits invisibility over a broad frequency range from 52 to 64 kHz. Furthermore, our experimental
study indicates that this design approach should be scalable to different acoustic frequencies and offers the
possibility for a variety of devices based on coordinate transformation.

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.024301 PACS numbers: 43.20.+g, 43.35.+d, 46.40.Ff

Recently, a new design paradigm called coordinate electromagnetic waves and acoustic waves in a two-
transformation has inspired a series of key explorations dimensional [2D] geometry. Yet, this 2D acoustic cloak
to manipulate, store, and control the flow of energy, in the requires anisotropic mass density which is not common in
form of either sound, elastic waves, or light radiation [1,2]. naturally occurring materials [25,26]. Consequently the
A set of novel optical devices was proposed based on experimental studies of acoustic cloak have been hampered
transformation optics [3–5]; they usually call for compli- by the difficulty in creating suitable materials and so far
cated medium with anisotropic and spatially varying per- remain challenging.
mittivity and permeability tensor to accomplish the desired In this Letter, we overcome the above challenges in
functionality. Recent advances in synthetic structured acoustic cloak design by introducing an acoustic trans-
metamaterial [6–8] whose properties are determined by mission line approach. The research on acoustic metama-
its subwavelength structure, offers the potential to physi- terial was first stimulated by the opportunity to develop
cally implement these complicated media. artificial media with negative material properties [27,28].
Among the most exciting examples is perhaps an elec- By taking the analogy between lumped acoustic elements
tromagnetic cloak that can render the objects invisible. The and electronic circuit elements, this transmission line (TL)
first experimental demonstration of such a cloak was re- approach enabled a new class of acoustic metamaterials
ported in microwave [9]. However, the invisibility effect [29] and ultrasound focusing through a metamaterial
was obtained only in a narrow frequency range because of network [30]. As a demonstration, we designed a 2D
the strong dispersion inherent to the resonant elements cylindrical cloak as shown in Fig. 1 in order to hide an
used to build the cloak. In addition, such resonances led object in the center. This acoustic cylindrical cloak is
to undesired material absorption in the cloak. To mitigate implemented by a 2D array of subwavelength cavities
these constraints, several different schemes of cloaking
utilizing nonresonant structure were proposed [10–14].
One example is a so-called carpet cloak [15,16]. How-
ever, the waves travel faster through the carpet cloak than
through the outer space, such a faster-than-light speed
thereby sets a fundamental restriction for broadband appli-
cation in ambient air.
In contrast, cloaking of other classical waves such as
acoustic waves does not suffer from such a limitation
for electromagnetic cloaks [17–19]. However, in general (a) (b)
the elastodynamic equations do not have this invariance FIG. 1 (color online). Schematic diagram of the experimental
symmetry [20]. Fortunately, acoustic waves in fluids setup. A burst of monotonic signal with a width of 20 periods
follow such form invariance and several theoretical was used to drive the transducer as an underwater point source in
schemes of transformation have been proposed [21–24]. the water tank. One needle-sized hydrophone detected the ultra-
Theoretical analysis of an acoustic cloak [24] was reported sonic signals in the immediate environment of (a) the object and
based on the equivalence between transverse electric (b) the cloaked object.

0031-9007=11=106(2)=024301(4) 024301-1 Ó 2011 The American Physical Society

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PRL 106, 024301 (2011) PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 14 JANUARY 2011

and connecting channels with spatially tailored geometry.

The acoustic wave propagation through this discrete net-
work can be described by a set of telegrapher’s equations in
which the motion of the fluid is equivalent to the behavior
of the current in the circuit. The acoustic cloak is expected
to be low loss and broadband with the use of nonresonant
constituent elements.
(a)
In our design, the 2D acoustic metamaterial cloak is
designed to squeeze the cylindrical region 0 < r < R2
into an annular region R1 < r0 < R2 where r and r0 are
the radial coordinate in the original and transformed sys-
tem, respectively. The acoustic waves are thus excluded
from the extended volume and smoothly bent inside the
cloak, with no perturbation of exterior field. We choose
the inner and outer radius of the cloak as R1 ¼ 13:5 mm,
R2 ¼ 54:1 mm. Using 2D telegrapher’s equations to (b)
describe the distributed acoustic system, this given warp- (c)
ing of space can be achieved by providing the desired
distribution of the serial inductor and shunt capacitor FIG. 2 (color online). A 2D acoustic cloak for underwater
ultrasound waves. (a) The configuration of the acoustic cylin-
in the annular region interpreted as Lr ¼
w 2S
r
r
L ¼ drical cloak synthesized by an acoustic transmission line,

w r
 rR1 2
2S ð r Þ C ¼ 2
rS w ðR2RR2
1
Þ2 as plotted in namely, serial inductors and shunt capacitors. The inset is the
expanded view of the network. The cavities with large volume
Fig. 2(b). (See the supplementary material [31].) To facili-
work as shunt capacitors and those cavities are connected by
tate the experimental realization of the cloak, here we used narrow channels that act as the serial inductors. (b) One building
the simplified functional form of the cloaking parameters. block of the acoustic circuit, each unit cell consists of one large
The acoustic cloak with the above parameter specifica- cavity in the center with channels connecting to the four neigh-
tion is physically synthesized by a planar network of boring blocks. The reduced cloaking parameters are used in the
acoustic circuits machined in an aluminum plate as shown design. The serial impedance Zr , shunt admittance Y have
in Fig. 2(a). These building blocks are cascaded in a lattice constant values and Z’ increases as radius changes from
configuration which is diagonal in a cylindrical basis. In R1 ¼ 13:5 mm to the R2 ¼ 54:1 mm. (c) The geometry parame-
such a topology, the cloak is approximated by 16 homoge- ters of the building blocks in the layers with odd number are
neous concentric cylinders. presented in the table. The depth and width tr , wr and t’ , w’ of
In our experiment, the water-filled network structure the channels along radial and angular directions have constant
behaves as a lumped anisotropic TL for incoming under- values of 0.5 mm.
water ultrasound. In each unit cell as shown in Fig. 2(b), as
the size of each unit cell is only around one-tenth of the Fig. 1. The object is a steel cylinder with size equal to
wavelength at operating frequency of 60 kHz, the cavity the inner radius of the cloak. The side of the cloak ma-
with large volume in center works as an acoustic capacitor chined with the metamaterial network was placed against
C ¼
VC2 whereas the channels connecting it to the four the bottom of the tank in order to seal water inside. The
w w
ultrasound waves were launched from a spherical shaped
neighboring cavities act as serial inductors Lr ¼
w Slrr
l
transducer as a point source with a distance of 165 mm
L ¼
w S [32–34]. These relations imply the realization (about 6.5 wavelengths) away from the center of the cloak.
of the TL cloak with the spatially varying parameter profile To map the pressure field, a hydrophone was mounted on a
by tailoring the geometry of the corresponding building horizontal linear translation stage to scan in x-y directions.
blocks as listed in Fig. 2(c). Such an anisotropic circuit By stepping the hydrophone in small increments of 3 mm
network reroutes the paths of underwater sound around the and recording the acoustic pulse signal from the water at
cloaked object without significant scattering. In the lumped every step, we acquired the 2D spatial field distribution of
circuit model, the aluminum is assumed as acoustically the ultrasound wave scattering pattern.
rigid considering the acoustic impedance
c of aluminum It is evident in our experiment that the presence of steel
is around 11 times of that of water. Moreover, the majority cylinder alone in the water tank produces considerable
of acoustic energy can be predominantly confined in scattering and shadowing at 60 kHz as shown in Fig. 3(a).
the fluid as a result of the wave excitation in the By surrounding the steel cylinder with the metamaterial
experiment [35,36]. cloak in Fig. 3(d), however, the wave trajectory was re-
For experimental confirmation of the cloaking perform- stored behind the cloak with diminutive distortion in the
ance, we placed an object in a water tank and compared the cylindrical wave fronts, making the cloak and the hidden
wave fronts of propagating ultrasound in our measurement, cylinder invisible under the hydrophone. Very small at-
with or without the presence of our cloak as shown in tenuation of the transmitted fields is observed on the exit
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PRL 106, 024301 (2011) PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 14 JANUARY 2011

side of the cloak, demonstrating the low-loss nature of the obtained using a MATLAB program to process the experi-
metamaterial cloak based on transmission line model. mental data. To facilitate the comparison of the cloaking
To demonstrate the broadband nature of our designed performance, we defined the averaged visibility of an
P P Pmin;j
cloak, the acoustic wave field distributions at 52 and object as  ¼ n1 nj¼1 j , where j ¼ Pmax;j
max;j þPmin;j
, Pmax;j
64 kHz are presented in Figs. 3(b), 3(c), 3(e), and 3(f)
and Pmin;j are the maximum and minimum peak values
for both cases with and without cloak. The field maps from
these measurements present similar cloaking behavior with along the wave front numbered by j. This can be compared
those at 60 kHz. This is not surprising since our metama- to the traditional measurement of so-called scattering
terial cloak is constructed by nonresonant elements. cross-sectional area, but performed for the convenience
Theoretically, the cloak is expected to operate over a of the near field measurement and limited field of view
wide frequency range of 40 to 80 kHz. The effectiveness in our experiment setup. Figure 4(a) shows one example of
of cloak at high frequency is restricted by two factors. The the measured peak pressure at 60 kHz along one wave front
first is the breakdown of the lumped circuit model when on the exit side of the object for both cases with and
the unit cell is comparable to one quarter of wavelength. without cloak. This wave front is near the boundary
The other limit is the cutoff frequency due to the low-pass of the cloak between y ¼ 100 mm and y ¼ 170 mm.
topology of the circuit network. However, in the current As reference, the measurement results for the free space
experiment we can only verify the cloaking behavior from when there are neither objects nor cloak in the water tank is
52 to 64 kHz due to the limited operating frequency range plotted. In Fig. 4(b), the averaged visibility of the cloaked
of the transducer. object over all the wave fronts on the exit side is compared
To further quantify the reduction of scattering and shad- with the one with only bare cylinder. The comparison
owing of the cloaked object, we conducted a set of mea- clearly indicates that the cloak preserves the obvious
surements over different frequencies. The peak values of shielding effectiveness over a broad frequency range. We
pressure along the wave fronts behind the cloak were can read the visibility of 0.62 for the bare steel cylinder,

FIG. 3 (color online). Measured pressure field mappings of the bare steel cylinder and the cloaked steel cylinder illuminated with a
point ultrasound source. The cloak lies in the center of the water tank and surrounds the steel cylinder. The scattering field patterns of
the bare steel cylinder at (a) 60 kHz (b) 52 kHz, and (c) 64 kHz. The pseudo–color maps in the immediate environment of the cloaked
steel cylinder at (d) 60 kHz (e) 52 kHz, and (f) 64 kHz.
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