Manufacture of Reclaimed Fiber Non-Woven for Sound Absorption

Recycling is the process of making or bringing out new products from a product that has originally served its purpose. The use of non-woven for noise reduction is based on two major advantages of these materials, namely low production costs and small specific gravity. Through this thesis, an attempt was made and implemented an innovative technique of developing stitch bonded non-woven by using recycled fiber. Knitted wastes were collected from cut and sew knitwear factories and recycled by using fabric opening machine in Adey abeba textile factory. The opened fibers are carded by mechanical carding machine by varying the number of layers. Six nonwoven samples are manufactured by stitching the web structure with core spun yarn. The manufactured reclaimed fiber stitch bonded nonwoven sound absorption coefficients were measured according to ASTM E 1050 standard by an impedance tube. The results revealed that the sound absorption coefficient increased with increasing frequency level of 500 Hz, 1000 Hz, 1500 Hz, 2000 Hz, 2500 Hz and 3000 Hz. Factors influencing sound absorption of nonwoven materials such as fabric thickness, areal density, air permeability and thermal conductivity were tested. The results revealed that while thickness increases the sound absorbing performance also increases. Low frequency sound absorption has direct relationship with thickness. However, at higher frequencies thickness has insignificant effect on sound absorption. Less dense and more open structure absorbs sound of low frequencies. Denser structure performs better for frequencies above 2000 Hz. Air permeability of the stitch bonded nonwoven decreases the sound absorption performance increases. The mechanism of sound absorption was conversion of sound energy in to heat but the effect of thermal conductivity of stitch bonded nonwoven structure was very small.