When the hole dimensions are in the submillimeter region,
however, the absorption peak becomes wider, making the porous
absorbing material almost unnecessary. This fact leads to the potential
development of transparent sound absorbing materials based
on microperforated panels (MPP), long a target in architectural acoustics.49 The basic theory of microperforated panels was presented
by Maa in the 1970s, and this theory was further improved
in 1997.50,51 The theory predicts that when the diameters of the
perforations are less than 0.3 mm, enough acoustic resistance and
low-acoustic mass reactance is provided to produce wide-band
sound absorption. However, further reduction in the size of the
holes below a certain value, does not provide a wider absorption
bandwidth. Although, the maximum absorption coefficient and
maximum possible absorption bandwidth depend on the value of
the acoustic resistance, its practical manufacture is limited by the
value of the perforate constant. Figure 6 shows Maa’s theoretical
predictions of the sound absorption coefficient for three different
perforated panel absorbers.52