Potential of Using Natural Fiber for Building Acoustic Absorber: a Review

Sustainability is one of the significant goals in the evaluation and promotion of building materials in the current society. This paper presents an evaluation of the potential of natural fiber for building acoustics absorber. This was done by comparing all aspects of sustainability including economy, social and environmental needs between the natural and synthetic fibers. Some features of natural fibers such as light weight, bio-degradability, low-cost, carbon-dioxide neutral, low consumption of energy and health aspects has been the major factors that contributed to its use in many construction applications. In addition to that, previous researches showed that sound absorbing materials with natural fibers have good acoustic properties in high frequency range similar with those synthetic fiber. However, high water absorption, prone to termite attack, less fire resistance and low strength are remaining the issues militating against the natural fiber for building acoustic absorber. Despite that, natural fibers have already been proven alternatives to synthetic fiber in building acoustic absorber thereby alleviating some sustainability issues associated with the use of synthetics materials in building acoustics.