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- Application of Foam Materials in Acoustic Material
Foam product is one of the most important acoustical materials, which is used to quiet workplaces, homes, automobiles, and so forth to increase the comfort and safety of their inhabitants by reducing noise generated both inside and outside of those spaces.
In a simple term, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium. When an object vibrates, the air around it vibrates too. These vibrations are carried through the air in the form of soundwaves until the air inside your ears begins to vibrate. This sensation is what eventually gets interpreted by the brain as noise, speech and music.
The biggest difference between sound blocking and sound absorption is that sound blocking is the process of blocking noise from entering a room while sound absorption is the process of absorbing sound waves within a room, so they don’t create echo.
Sound absorbing foams are typically softer and more lightweight than their sound blocking counterparts. This open and flexible cell structure acts as a natural soundwave absorber and prevents noises from reverberating off hard surfaces. It does this by converting existing sound energy to heat and reducing the ability of soundwaves to bounce back into the room.
Foams with a closer cell structure are more common in blocking sound, as the thicker and denser the foam, the fewer chances soundwaves have of penetrating through to the other side.
Various materials have been investigated to be with the characteristic of absorbing sound or blocking sound, such as open-cell aluminum foams, ceramic foams with spherical pores, polyurethane foams with thin membranes, double porosity, and additively manufactured foams, adaptable materials, micro-perforated plates with complex patterns of micro-slits, and even meta-porous as well as active configurations.
With years of experience designing and developing foam components for acoustic materials, Alfa Chemistry can offer the best acoustic foam materials for your custom solutions. For more information, please don't hesitate to contact us.
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