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Malaysian Technical Universities Conference on Engineering & Technology 2012, MUCET 2012
Part 2 Mechanical And Manufacturing Engineering
Abstract
The use of synthetic materials as acoustic absorbers is still applied extensively in building industry. These nonbiodegradable materials do not only cause pollution to the environment, but their production also contributes significantly in
emitting green house gas in the atmosphere. Corresponding research has therefore being driven to find sustainable and ecofriendly materials to be an alternative sound absorber. This paper discusses the utilization of natural fibers from sugarcane
waste to be an acoustic material. Sound absorber samples from sugarcane wasted fibers are fabricated and their acoustic
properties are investigated through experiment. Good acoustic performance is found at 1.2 - 4.5 kHz with average
absorption coefficient of 0.65 and is comparable against that from the classical synthetic absorber.
2013
Published
by Elsevier
Ltd. Ltd.
2013The
TheAuthors.
Authors.
Published
by Elsevier
Selection and
peer-review
under under
responsibility
of the Research
Management
& Innovation
Universiti
Malaysia
Selection
and/or
peer-review
responsibility
of the Research
Management
&Centre,
Innovation
Centre,
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Perlis
Perlis.
Keywords: sugarcane waste; acoustic material; sound absorber; natural fibers; absorption coefficient Introduction
1. Introduction
The issue of conserving hygienic condition and environment and its relation with global warming has attracted attention
of researchers for new technologies which is more environmentally friendly. Besides finding alternative energy to limit the
use of fossil fuels and deforestation, attempts are also directed to create products from recyclable and sustainable materials.
For application in buildings, which emphasizes sound quality in a room such as mosque, theatre hall, music studio, lecture
room, cinema and meeting room, the classical abrasive and porous acoustic materials are still widely used. This room
should be well controlled in order to provide good quality of speech intelligibility for the audience.
Production of these synthetic materials has been known to release significant CO2 into the atmosphere compared to that
of panels made from natural materials [1]. The synthetic nature of the former also creates another problem in disposition
which is harmful to the environment. Continuation of their usage is therefore against the effort to realize a
environment. Thus finding alternative green materials which have not only comparable capability as sound absorbers, but
also bio-degradable, sustainable, abundance as well as less health risk are of interest.
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2. Methodology
2.1. Sugarcane Fibers Fabrication of Absorber Sample
These Construction from fibers into an absorber sample is divided into two stages, namely the pre-treatment stage and
fabrication stage. In the pre-treatment stage, raw material was cut into 1 to 3 mm length. It was then sundried for 1 week and
again heated in the oven at 800C for 5 minutes to let the excess water in the fiber evaporated. Later, raw material was cut
into 5 to 10 mm length.
In the preparation stage, the raw material was mixed with different composition of binder. Here the binders used are
polyurethane and polyester. The mixture was then hot-pressed in a mould to obtain a round shape. The pressure given are
just enough for the sample to take shape. This is to retain the porosity of the sample. The flow chart of this process is shown
in Fig. 2.
The constructed absorber sample has diameter of 33 mm to fit in the impedance tube diameter in the sound absorption
test with thickness of roughly inch as seen in Fig. 3. For each type of the binder used, there are four different weight
composition ratios of fibers to binder; 90:10, 80:20, 70:30 and 60:40. The weight of the fibers is fixed for 1 gram and 3
grams.
2.2. Measurement of absorption coefficient
The measurement of sound absorption coefficient (denoted as ) was performed in an impedance tube by applying twomicrophone transfer function method according to ISO 10534-2:2001
Prepolarized free-amplifier (GRAS 26CA). RT Pro Photon v6.34
analyzer with Dactron software was used as the data acquisition system. The signal processing of the measured data was
done using Matlab. With diameter of the tube i.e. 33 mm, the reliable frequency range for this experiment is between 500
Hz to 4.5 kHz.
Pretreatment stage
Fabrication stage
Sample fiber
Hot press
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Fig. 4 shows the measurement setup for the test. The sample was placed at the end of the impedance tube and backed by
a rigid surface. The loudspeaker feeds the white noise signal in the tube where the incident and reflected sound pressure
recorded by the microphones are then processed to have the absorption coefficient of the sample.
Spectrum analyzer
Computer
Microphones
Removable cap
(rigid)
Loudspeaker
Sample
Noise
generator
Amplifier
636
0.9
absorption coefficient
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
frequency (Hz)
3500
4000
4500
1
0.9
absorption coefficient
0.8
60:40
70:30
80:20
90:10
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
frequency (Hz)
3500
4000
4500
Fig. 8 compares the samples having 1 gram and 3 grams weight fibers with the same composition of binder, i.e. 70:30. It
can be seen that more fibers give better sound absorption. This can be explained as the denser the acoustic panel, the greater
the flow resistivity. The airflow resistance becomes high because of fiber arrangement inside the panel is too close and
effectively. It shows that the denser absorber sample overcomes t
>
0.5 starting from 1.2 kHz with average absorption coefficient of 0.65.
Fig. 9 compares the acoustic performance of sugarcane absorber sample with that of 3 layers of woven cloth absorber
used for automotive application. The results shown that with the same thickness, sugarcane absorber performance is
comparable to the corresponding commercial product.
absorption coefficient
0.8
60:40
70:30
80:20
90:10
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
frequency (Hz)
3500
4000
4500
1
0.9
3 grams
1 gram
absorption coefficient
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
frequency (Hz)
3500
4000
4500
1
0.9
woven cloth
sugarcane fiber
absorption coefficient
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
frequency (Hz)
3500
4000
4500
Fig. 9. Comparison of sound absorption coefficient of sugarcane absorber with that of woven cloth sound insulator.
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638
4. Conclusion
Utilization of sugarcane wasted fibers as an alternative sound absorbing material has been investigated. The effect of
binder composition and fiber density are discussed with the former affects only for the 3 grams fibers and the latter to give
better absorption coefficient. It is found that acoustical performance of the sugarcane absorber with thickness of inch is
comparable with that of commercial sound insulator with average absorption coefficient of 0.65 at frequency 1.2 - 4.5 kHz.
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