Investigation of thermal, mechanical and acoustic performance of bio-materials based on plaster-gypsum and cork

The building sector is one of the biggest consumers of energy in the world and it is pushing the scientific community to find various alternative solutions to solve the problem of thermal insulation of buildings. Therefore, the selection of appropriate building materials is a major challenge for improving the thermal comfort and energy performance of buildings. In this scenario, the interest of plaster-based composites as insulating materials increases, in particular for new applications, as insulators for the building envelope, and this deserves to be studied. In this investigation, new plaster-based composites with cork were produced and tested at lab scale, in order to obtain cheap solutions with improved thermo-physical and 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 cork as a natural reinforcement: thermal conductivity was equal to 0.097 W/m.K, the compressive strength to about 2.30 MPa, and the transmission loss to about 40 dB.