Abstract:
The quest for sound-absorbing materials that are not only environmentally friendly, but also sustainable is the
foremost reason for natural fibre-acoustic materials. Bark cloth is a natural non-woven fabric that is largely
produced from Ficus trees. An exploratory investigation of bark cloth a non-woven material and its reinforcement
in epoxy polymer composites has been fabricated and investigated for the sound absorption properties so as
to find the most suitable applications and also to see whether bark cloth can be used in some applications in
place of man-made fibres. Three types of material species were investigated with their respective composites.
The fibre morphology showed bark cloth to be a porous fabric that showed promising sound absorption properties
at higher frequencies. The sound absorption results of four-layer material selections of Ficus natalensis, Ficus
brachypoda and Antiaris toxicaria bark cloth showed sound absorption coefficient of 0.7; 0.71 and 0.91 at f > 6400 Hz,
respectively. The bark cloth reinforced laminar epoxy composites had reduced sound absorption coefficients, which
ranged from 0.1 to 0.35, which was attributed to decreased porosity and vibration in the bark cloth fibre network.
