Light-weight poly(vinyl chloride)-based soundproofing composites with foam/film alternating multilayered structure

Poly(vinyl chloride)-based (PVC) multilayered composites with alternating foam and film layer structure were designed through a multilayered co-extrusion system. Light-weight composites with good soundproofing properties were obtained. The effects of foaming process, acoustic impedance mismatch, and layer number on the soundproofing properties were investigated. Sound transmission loss (STL) was used to characterize the soundproofing properties. The experimental results revealed that the foam/film multilayered composites showed higher STL and lower density than the film/film multilayered composite without foaming process. In addition, the multilayered composite presented better soundproofing properties when there was a bigger acoustic impedance mismatch between adjacent layers. Moreover, as the layer number increased from 2 to 16, the STL of the PVC composite increased gradually and reached a maximum at 8 layers (an average value of 26.3 dB). However, the STL of 16-layer composite decreased because of the reduction of scattering and reflection of sound waves among the bubbles.