Exploring the potential of recycled textile panels to improve sound insulation in buildings

Saving natural resources thanks to the use of recycled components and the growing interest towards improvement of indoor comfort conditions of the building occupants are stimulating the scientific community to investigate several sustainable building strategies. In this sense, the improvement of the sound insulation of buildings in combination with the use of more sustainable options is fostered by many regulations and, in particular, by the so called “Minimum Environmental Criteria”. The present work investigates the sound insulation behaviour of nonwoven materials made from textile waste following an airlaying industrial process. Several panels with different density and thickness were evaluated according to the damping properties (i.e. total dynamic stiffness and the average loss factor). The results achieved allowed to hypothesize the employment of the tested materials in various fields. AlphaCell® software was used to model the expected sound insulating behaviour of different assemblies including the tested materials in combination with other building structures. The tested components were proposed to be used in air gaps of vertical walls, or as elastic layers in horizontal structures, applied to new building constructions or existing ones, showing an interesting potential for improvement of both airborne and impact sound insulation performance.