The final prototype of the proposed acoustic curtain to be used in hospital wards is shown below. Cost-effective materials were used to ensure that our product would be easily affordable to all ranges of medical institutions.
Polyurethane foam with textile waste was used in between curtain fabrics as it offers efficient sound absorption properties. 60-rigid polyurethane foam (RPF) was used as it has a minimum value of 0.4 of sound absorption (Tiuc et al., 2016).
Polyurethane foam has good thermal insulating properties, has a high resistance to water absorption, and has low moisture-vapour permeability of 16.7 g cm m^-2 day^-1 mmHg^-1. It has a thermal conductivity of 0.026/0.0224 (W m^-1 °C^-1) / (kcal h^-1 m^-1 °C^-1). These thermal insulation properties will keep patients in a warm or cool environment. The material used is also fire-retardant, hence keeping patients safe in case of a fire (Özdil, Özçelik Kayseri and Süpüren Mengüç, 2020).
The curtain is fitted with rail wheels, to runs from top to bottom for effective soundproofing. The fabric is incorporated with silver ions, an antimicrobial agent, to offer the curtain with durable antimicrobial properties, thus improving infection control (Woo et al., 2008). The curtain was zipped with a mackintosh fabric at the bottom to ease infection control, as it would be cleaned and disinfected regularly.





References
Özdil, N., Özçelik Kayseri, G. and Süpüren Mengüç, G. (2020) ‘Investigation of Sound Absorption Characteristics of Textile Materials Produced from Recycled Fibers’, Waste in Textile and Leather Sectors, pp. 1–20. doi: 10.5772/intechopen.92792.
Tiuc, A. E. et al. (2016) ‘Improved Sound Absorption Properties of Polyurethane Foam Mixed with Textile Waste’, Energy Procedia, 85(November 2015), pp. 559–565. doi: 10.1016/j.egypro.2015.12.245.
Woo, K. J. et al. (2008) ‘Antibacterial activity and mechanism of action of the silver ion in Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli’, Applied and Environmental Microbiology. American Society for Microbiology, 74(7), pp. 2171–2178. doi: 10.1128/AEM.02001-07.