High-damping polyurethane/hollow glass microspheres sound insulation materials: Preparation and characterization

The high-damping property of polyurethane elastomers and the low density of the hollow glass microspheres (HGM) were used to prepare the sound insulation materials in the present work. The transmission loss (TL) was measured to evaluate the HGM content on the sound insulation properties. The experimental results showed that the addition of HGM improved the hardness and compression modulus of the HGM-filled polyurethane composites, and the loss factor (tan δ) of polyurethane composites were greater than 0.9. The average transmission loss (ATL, from 63 to 6300 Hz) reached 37.32 dB when the content of HGM was 10 wt%. The ATL of the HGM-filled polyurethane composites with 15 wt% HGM in the damping control region and the mass control region were 31.94 and 46.78 dB, respectively. The synergistic effect of the microphase separation, the interfacial effect and the rigidity of polyurethane composites resulted in the improvement on sound insulation property. The polyurethane composite has a great potential application for the field of sound insulation materials.