Cement compositions comprising locally resonant acoustic metamaterials

A cement interrogation technique, comprising:

• transmitting acoustic energy at and near a local resonance frequency of an acoustic metamaterial in an area where a cement formulation comprising the acoustic metamaterial was meant to be placed, the cement formulation comprising a base cement slurry and an admixture of acoustic metamaterial particles engineered to influence sound transmission at specific frequencies and act as band gap filters so as to exhibit relative acoustic transparency at most frequencies but reflect much or all sound at particular frequencies, the acoustic metamaterial particles each comprising a dense inner core and a compliant surrounding matrix, wherein the cement formulation exhibits a substantial increase in acoustic transmission loss over the base cement slurry at a first frequency of sound, and does not exhibit a substantial increase in transmission loss over the base cement slurry at a second frequency of sound;
• detecting an acoustic response;
• analyzing the acoustic response for band-gap performance comprising substantially elevated transmission loss at or near a given first frequency that rapidly falls off to non-elevated levels of transmission loss at nearby frequencies;
• determining that the cement formulation is present in regions exhibiting band-gap performance;
• and
• determining that the cement formulation is not present and/or has been compromised in regions not exhibiting band-gap performance.