Directional excitation of the designer surface acoustic waves

We propose an efficient design route to realize directional excitation of the structure-induced surface waves for airborne sound. The whole system consists of a periodically corrugated rigid plate combining with a pair of asymmetric narrow slits. The directional excitation of the mimicked surface waves stems from the destructive interference between the evanescent waves emitted from the double slits. The directionality can be switched conveniently by tuning the external frequency. The theoretical prediction is validated well by simulations and experiments. Promising applications can be anticipated such as in designing compact devices for airborne sound. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.