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Description
The advancement of 3D printing of ceramic materials has opened several research lines regarding the fabrication of acoustic porous building materials for a range of applications. To this end, this paper presents a first proof-of-concept experimental characterization of sound-absorbing panels produced via Viscous Thread Printing (VTP), a previously unexplored fabrication method for room acoustic applications. VTP is an extrusion 3D printing process in which the induced filament instability spontaneously generates an open-cell structure without requiring an explicit toolpath design. We evaluated the sound absorption of three typologies of ceramic panels and of resulting layered configurations, addressing the impact of design parameters such as thread diameter and associated pore size, panel thickness, and layering order. The acoustic measurements were conducted in the Small scale Reverberation Room (SSRR) of Politecnico di Torino. Measurements on cylindrical samples of the base ceramic material were performed with an Impedance Tube to gain initial insight into the contribution of the three-dimensional foam structure. Experimental results show, at greater thicknesses and in layered configurations, panels with absorption coefficients in the range 0.3 to 0.65 in the mid-high frequency spectrum, framing VTP as a fabrication method with potential for further research in the field.