We deal with the time-harmonic acoustic waves scattered by a large number of
small holes, of maximal radius a,a<<1, arbitrary (i.e. not necessarily
periodically) distributed in a bounded part of a homogeneous background.
We show that as their number M grows following the law $M:=M(a):=O(a^{-s}),
; a<<1$, the collection of these holes has one of the following behaviors:
- if s<1, then the scattered fields tend to vanish as a tends to zero,
i.e. the cluster is a soft one.
- if s=1, then the cluster behaves as an equivalent medium modeled by a
refraction index, supported in a given bounded domain Ω, which is
described by certain geometry properties of the holes and their local
distribution. The cluster is a moderate (or intermediate) one.
- if s>1, then the cluster behaves as a totally reflecting extended body,
modeled by a bounded and smooth domain Ω, i.e. the incident waves are
totally reflected by the surface of this extended body. The cluster is a rigid
one. These approximations are provided with explicit error estimates in terms
of a,a<<1.