Investigation of thermo-acoustic and mechanical performance of gypsum-plaster and polyester fibers based materials for building envelope

Buildings are one of the main consumers of energy in the world and it is pushing the scientific community to find alternative solutions to improve the thermal insulation of building envelope. The selection of appropriate building materials is an important challenge for improving thermal comfort and energy performance of buildings. In this scenario, the interest of gypsum-plaster based composites is increasing. In this investigation, new plaster-based composites with polyester fibers were produced and tested at lab scale, in order to obtain cheap solutions with improved thermo-acoustic performance. The results show that it is possible to improve the thermal, mechanical, and acoustic performance of construction biomaterials by using plaster as a binder and polyester fibers as reinforcement: thermal conductivity was equal to 0.20 W/m.K, the compressive strength to about 4 MPa, and the transmission loss in the 40–45 dB range. When compared to the plaster without fibers, thermal conductivity was reduced by about 29%, mechanical resistance was increased by about 76%, and absorption coefficient was reduced by about 48%.