Natural fibers have recently been used for making composite materials and they offer several advantages over synthetic materials. While these natural fibers can be extracted from many sources such as sisal, jute, coir, flax, hemp, pineapple and banana3; jute has been promoted as the most readily available, environment friendly, abundant, economic and bio-renewable source. It is specifically cultivated in large quantities in the eastern part of India and in Bangladesh4. It is a lignin-cellulose fiber

which is composed primarily of the plant materials; cellulose (major component of plant fiber) and lignin (major components wood fiber). It falls into one of the bast fiber category (fiber collected from bast or skin of the plant) along with kenaf, in­dustrial hemp, flax (linen), ramie and so forth.

Jute is used in various forms for noise control applications. The raw jute fiber after cleaning are used to produce jute yarn by a spinning process. The jute yarn is then weaved to make jute textile or cloth. Stacks of jute yarn laid in a random or a definite sequence are pressed under temperature to produce jute felt. The jute felt/ fiber in turn can be chemically treated with a bonding agent usually natural rubber latex as a resin and pressed under certain temperature to form jute-based biocom­posite panels. In few instances the raw fibers after appropriate processing can be chopped and used as fills in noise control blankets and pads. In jute mills where jute-based textiles are manufactured, during the trimming operations of these tex­tiles many waste trims are produced. These trims can be used as acoustical fills as well, for noise control. All the above forms ofjute derivatives are shown in Fig. 6.3 in some form or the other can be used for noise control purposes.