Experimental study on sound absorbing performance of rubber crumb

The present paper describes an experimental campaign aimed at the determination of acoustical properties of vulcanized rubber crumbs obtained by the shredding of used tires. In particular, their performance as sound absorbing material in lined ducts has been investigated. The most innovative aspect that is addressed in the study is the use of a waste material such as rubber tires reduced into small grains as a sound absorbing material: tires are in fact usually used at the end of their life cycle as fuel and burned in cement kilns in order to take advantage of their high heating value, with all the problems of pollution that this solution produces. Two kinds of rubber crumbs have been investigated in terms of characteristic dimension of the grains, porosity, and sound absorbing coefficient, while their “in situ” performance when used inside lined and parallel-baffle rectangular ducts has been evaluated measuring their insertion loss. The results of this research show that the acoustical behavior of the te...