Investigation on Thermal and Acoustic Properties of Hybrid Polymer Composite Reinforced by Date Palm Fibers and Rice Husks as a Construction Material

Abstract

This paper presents the versatility of date palm fibers and rice husks and its applications in different branches of engineering, particularly in civil engineering as a construction material. date palm fiber and rice husks are one of the natural materials abundantly available in tropical regions, and is extracted from agricultural or agro-industrial residues as an insulating material resource has various economic and environmental advantages such as reduction in the materials dependency on imported insulating and minimization of waste disposal. In this study date palm fibers and rice husks waste particleboards as insulation boards were manufactured. The boards were fabricated from unsaturated polyester resin as a matrix reinforced by rice husk and date palm fibers they have a total volume fraction (30%) with the ratios of (0/30, 5/25, 10/20 15/15, 20/10, 25/5 and 30/0) volume fraction of rice husk / date palm fibers Two groups of hybrid composite were prepared depending on the fibers length (palm fibers its length 2-3 mm and short fibers its length less than 1mm). The fabricated boards were evaluated for the thermophysical (thermal conductivity, specific heat and thermal diffusivity) properties and acoustic properties (sound absorption coefficient) for all the samples prepared. The results showed that thermal and acoustic insulation properties increase with increased the volume fraction of date palm fiber and rice husks in hybrid composite, whereas decrease with increased fiber length, moreover the thermal insulator of the polyester composite reinforced with rice husk gave a better thermal insulator whereas polyester composite reinforced by date palm fibers gave the best acoustic insulation.