Acoustic and mechanical characterization of a novel polypropylene fibers based composite aerogel

The problem of high fragility in practical acoustic applications has been existing in traditional aerogels. A novel polypropylene fibers based composite aerogel is successfully prepared with the poly vinyl alcohol as a binder by a freeze-drying process. The acoustic properties and mechanical properties of the obtained aerogels are measured. Then the effects of fibers concentration, binder concentration and thickness are discussed. The findings reveal that the aerogel with 5 wt.% fibers and 1 wt.% binder has light mass, optimal sound absorption ability and preferable compressive strength. The aerogel with a thickness of 30 mm possesses a high sound absorption efficiency that the noise reduction coefficient reaches 0.61.