Evaluation of PP/Clay Composites as Soundproofing Material

Noise should be disappeared or reduced by using soundproofing materials in our daily life. Polypropylene (PP)/Clay composites are interesting because of their physical and mechanical properties dramatically increased by small quantity of clay filled in PP matrix. In this paper, different types of specimens were made at 0.9, 2.9, 4.8, 6.5, 8.2 and 9.9 wt.% of organically modified clay reinforced PP (100 gram) by solvent based techniques. A heating press and laser cutting process were used to create specimens with thickness 3 mm, diameter 29 mm and 100 mm for high and low sound frequency test, respectively. The soundproofing property was measured by sound transmission loss (TL) through impedance tube method. The measured results showed that about 7 similar to 14.8 dB sound TL was increased for 29 mm diameter PP/Clay (6.5 wt.%) composite specimens compared with pure PP at 3200 similar to 6400Hz. And about 3.3 similar to 5.3 dB sound TL was increased for 100 mm diameter PP/Clay (6.5 wt.%) composite specimens compared with pure PP at 520 similar to 640Hz. In addition, mechanical properties of this composite were measured, and TEM images were taken in order to observe the micro-structure for research on relationship between soundproofing property and micromechanism.