Applied Acoustics 173 (2021) 107677

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science Impact of fiber length and surface modification on the acoustic

behaviour of jute fiber
Senthilrajan Sambandamoorthy a, Venkateshwaran Narayanan b,⇑, Lenin Babu Mailan Chinnapandi c,d,
Alavudeen Aziz e
a
↓ save Department of Mechanical Engineering, A.V.C. College of Engineering, Mayiladuthurai, India
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rajalakshmi Engineering College, Chennai, India
c
Electric Vehicles Incubation and Testing Division, Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai 600127, India
d
School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai 600127, India
e
School of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering, Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education, Tamilnadu, India
Sambandamoorthy, S.,
Narayanan, V.,
Chinnapandi, L. B. M., &
Aziz, A. (2021). Impact of
fiber length and surface

article info
modification on the
acoustic behaviour of jute
fiber. Applied Acoustics,
abstract
173, 107677.
doi:10.1016/j.apacoust.2020.107677
Article history: The use of plant fibers for acoustic applications in the industrial sector is increasing nowadays due to:
Received 24 May 2020 their porous nature, hollow lumen structure, and the presence of Nano-fibrils. The current investigation
Received in revised form 11 September aims to analyze the influence of jute fiber length and various chemical treatments on the sound absorp-
10.1016/j.apacoust.2020.107677
2020
tion property. The sound absorption coefficient was measured by the Impedance tube method. From the
Accepted 16 September 2020
results, it was found that 20 mm fiber length has the uppermost sound absorption coefficient at all fre-
downloaded on 2020-10-16 quencies, due to the increase in the number of air cavities and nanofibrils. Further, the 20 mm length fiber
was surface modified by NaOH, NaHCO3 and Cr2SO4 respectively and the sound absorption coefficient of
Keywords:
Sound absorption coefficient
the surface modified fibers was analyzed. The result showed that among the various chemical treatments,
Jute fiber alkali treated fiber has the maximum sound absorption coefficient than the other treated fibers. The SEM
Lumen images revealed that the chemical modification causes changes in the morphology of fibers. In addition,
Acoustic the comparative study of the experimental and theoretical sound absorption coefficient showed good
Alkali treatment agreement between them.
Impedance tube ! 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction conditions. It causes human health problems, i.e. Cardiac disease,

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the use of
plant fibers to produce machine parts due to their low density,
low cost, good specific strength, high toughness, reduced respira-
tory irritation and less dermal effect and importantly porosity,
apart from their ecofriendly and biodegradable characteristics
[1]. Now- a- days noise pollution is a serious matter in the automo-
tive industries and overcoming this problem is an important chal-
lenge. To reduce the noise pollution, concentration was made on
the absorption and insulation material that prevents the sound
wave when incident on it through reflection [2]. The amount of
acoustic energy dissipated is measured as the sound absorption
coefficient and that is a dimensionless number. Its value is in the
range of 0 to 1 [3]. Most of the Mechanical systems, home appli-
ances, industrial machines, Electric motors, Air craft and Automo-
tive vehicles produce noise and vibration under working
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: venkateshwaran.n@rajalakshmi.edu.in (V. Narayanan), lenin.
babu@vit.ac.in (L.B.M. Chinnapandi).
annoyance, fear, dizziness, Hearing Problem, Mental stress etc.
[4]. Hence, the sources of noise and vibration should be identified
and reduced by using isolators, enclosure, sound absorbing mate-
rial, etc. [5,6]. Sound absorbing materials receive the sound energy
and reduce the frequency, and for this purpose, porous types of
materials are widely employed. These materials have cavities,
channels which are used to pass the sound wave through them
and its effectiveness was determined by the absorption coefficient
[7]. Currently the research is focused on using natural fibers as
sound absorbing material because of the porous nature of the
fibers [8]. Some of the plant fibers like kenaf, hemp and coir are
already being used for acoustic purposes as they possess excellent
sound absorption efficiency, better shatter resistance and better
energy management characteristics than synthetic fibers [9].
D’Alessandro and Pispola [10] analyzed the sound absorption
properties of kenaf fiber by a reverberant room test and showed
that kenaf fiber has an absorption coefficient equal to 0.85 in the
frequency range of 500–5000 Hz. Lim et al. [11] studied kenaf fiber
and showed that the sound absorption property of kenaf fibers was
0.8 at 1.5 kHz frequency. Hosseini Fouladi et al. [12] studied the

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2020.107677
0003-682X/! 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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