Optimized reactive silencers with narrow side-branch tubes

This paper presents a theoretical study of the sound propagation in a waveguide loaded by an array of flush-mounted narrow side-branch tubes, forming a simple low-frequency reactive silencer. The individual tube-lengths and the distances between the adjacent tubes are optimized in order to maximize the minimum transmission loss over a given frequency range. The transmission properties of the silencer are calculated using the transfer matrix method, heuristic evolutionary approach is employed for the determination of the optimal parameters. The numerical results are validated against the finite element method simulation. A comprehensive parametric study is performed to demonstrate the optimized silencer performance as a function of the number of side-branch tubes, and the frequency range. It is shown that for the given frequency range, the minimum transmission loss of the optimized silencer increases linearly with the number of the side-branch tubes.