Experimental study to measure the sound transmission loss of natural fibers at tonal excitations

In this paper, the acoustical sound absorbing property such as Insertion Loss (IL) or sound transmission loss (STL) of natural fibers is measured experimentally. The STL is measured for tonal acoustic excitations (one-third octave band harmonic frequencies). The tonal acoustic excitations are generated by using acoustic transducer (loudspeaker) and passed through the various natural fiber samples. The primary objective of this work is to measure the absorption properties of available natural fibers so that they may be replaced with glass material or other synthetic fibers (such as glass, carbon, graphite etc.) for various engineering and architectural applications. The natural fibers used in this study are banana fibers, coconut coir fibers, hemp fibers, jute fibers and kenaf fibers. The diameter and the thickness of the natural fiber specimens are 0.160 m and 0.03 m respectively. It is observed from this experimental study that the sound absorption by the kenaf fibers is more as compared to other natural fibers at tonal one third-octave band harmonic acoustic excitation frequencies. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Aspects of Materials Science and Engineering.