Effect of Perforation Volume on Acoustic Absorption of the 3D Printed Micro-Perforated Panels made of Polylactic Acid reinforced with Wood Fibers

Abstract

In recent times, Additive Manufacturing (AM) has been applied rapidly in almost all fields. This study was conducted to apply the additive manufacturing into an acoustic application by 3D printing the Micro-Perforated Panels (MPP) through Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) made of Polylactic Acid (PLA) reinforced with wood fibers. MPP were fabricated by altering its perforation volume. Later, the effect of perforation volume on acoustic absorption of the fabricated MPP was measured using the two-microphone impedance tube method as per ISO 10534-2 standard. The result shows altering the perforation volume affects the acoustic absorption of the MPP. MPP with a thickness of 2 mm and a perforation diameter of 0.2 mm shows the maximum sound absorption coefficient of 0.93 at 2173 Hz. It is made possible to absorb the 3D printed MPP made of natural fiber reinforced composite at different spectrums by altering the perforation volume.