Experimental study of the effect of the addition of Posidonia Oceanica fiber on the thermal and acoustic insulation properties of plaster

Abstract In this work, plaster and natural Posidonia Oceanica (PO) fibers are combined to create a composite material that was recently produced. This work’s primary objective is to assess the mechanical and thermophysical performance of the composite material in order to determine whether or not it may be used as a thermal and acoustic insulation material in buildings. For this end, prismatic and parallelepipedic specimens of different dimensions were made with fiber percentages ranging from 0% to 20%. In addition, parallelepiped panels (600 mm × 600 mm × 40 mm 3 ) were also prepared containing 10% of PO fibers. Mechanical properties (flexual strength, compressive strength), thermal properties and sound absorption coefficient were investigated. For each test specimen, the density was calculated for a proportion of fibers ranging from 0% to 20%. The results indicated a marked improvement in the compressive and flexural strength of the fiber-reinforced mixtures. This improvement is respectively 14.5% and 33.8% for mixtures containing 10% of PO fibers. Additionally, the addition of PO fibers significantly decreases density (by 40.5%), thermal conductivity (by 68.5%) and thermal diffusivity (by 36.9%) of the different mixtures. The ideal mechanical characteristics are attained when 5%–10% of the volume is made up of Posidonia Oceanica fibers. The results of the sound absorption coefficient test show that the mixture of plaster with 10% fibers has a good sound absorption coefficient of 0.78 for high frequencies between 1000 Hz and 4000 Hz. This work has shown conclusively that the incorporation of PO fibers, up to a maximum of 10% with plaster, makes it possible to obtain a lightweight composite that can potentially be used as a new insulating construction material.