Exploring acoustic properties of banana fiber composites with elastomeric filler through a computational approach

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the use of natural fibers as reinforcements in composites. This trend is mainly driven by their eco-friendly nature and wide availability. The objective of this research is to explore the extensive potential of combining Banana Fiber with Tyre Rubber Particles (TRP) as elastomeric fillers in natural fiber composites, focusing primarily on their applications in the automotive and aeronautical industries, particularly in terms of acoustic response. The composite sequences were named as NFC-I to NFC-V, where NFC represented Natural Fiber Composites. To thoroughly investigate the acoustic properties of these innovative composites, experimental analysis on the impedance tube was conducted along with numerical simulations on the Ansys Harmonic Acoustics^® module with Transmission Loss (TL) as the key parameter. An orthotropic material model based on the chopped fiber RVE (Representative Volume Element) was developed on the Ansys 2022 R1^® Material Designer Module which could be deemed as the novelty of the current work. From the results, it was seen that within the designated frequency bands, specifically the low (67-400 Hz), medium (400-1900 Hz), and high (1900-6300 Hz) ranges, the NFC-4 (15 wt% of TRP) composite consistently demonstrated the lowest average TL values. Conversely, NFC-3 (27 wt% of TRP) consistently showcased the highest TL values, reaching a peak of 27.13 dB in the low-frequency range and 46.73 dB in the high-frequency range. The results obtained from the impedance tube experiments align remarkably well with the numerical simulation outputs, demonstrating the reliability of the numerical model in estimating the transmission loss of composite laminatesa crucial parameter for evaluating acoustic performance.