Acoust Aust DOI 10.1007/s40857-015-0008-5 ORIGINAL PAPER An Overview of Fibre-Reinforced Composites for Musical Instrument Soundboards Ajith Damodaran · Larry Lessard · A. Suresh Babu Received: 23 December 2014 / Accepted: 7 February 2015 © Australian Acoustical Society 2015 Abstract Traditionally the material of construction of many musical instruments has been limited to wood. The unique mechanical and acoustic properties of wood make it the material of choice for making musical instruments. In recent years, wood for musical instruments is depleting, becoming more expensive and is of less acceptability due to environmental changes. This has resulted in most musical instrument builders searching for alternative materials to traditional musical instruments. This paper presents an important overview of recent research and developments and presents an initiative focusing on fibre reinforced composites as an alternative material for stringed instruments. Fibre composites are emerging as a competitive alternative material. Composite instruments has potential advantages for players concerned with functionality, sound, choreography and cost. Keywords Carbon fibre · Soundboard · Stringed instruments · Wood · Violin 1 Introduction Musical instruments can be classified into four main cate- gories: (1) idiophones: instruments that produce sound by vibrating themselves, e.g. xylophones (2) membranophones: instruments that use stretched vibrating membrane to pro- duce sound, e.g. drums (3) chordophones: instruments that relay on a stretched vibrating string e.g. violins, guitars (4) aerophones: instruments that use vibrating air column for producing sound e.g., flutes, bagpipes [1]. The major struc- tural part of many musical instruments is made from wood A. Damodaran (B ) · A. Suresh Babu Department of Manufacturing Engineering, Anna University, Sardar Patel Road, Chennai 600 025, India e-mail: ajidamodaran@gmail.com Present address: A. Damodaran Manufacturing Engineering Department, Central Institute of Plas- tics Engineering and Technology, Guindy, Chennai 600 032, India L. Lessard Department of Mechanical Engineering, McGill University, Macdonald Engineering Building, 817 Sherbrooke West, Montreal, QC H3A 2K6, Canada [2, 3]. In stringed instruments a soundboard is used to amplify the string vibrations and thus converts string vibration in to sound energy. For example, a violin top plate is made out of spruce wood due to its high specific stiffness (i.e., stiffness relative to density) and lower internal friction in the longi- tudinal direction [4, 5] however the back plate is made with curly maple. Curly maple is used for its specific mechanical properties: it acts as a very elastic spring, especially due its curly texture. The xylophone consists of a wooden vibrat- ing plate hit by a mallet. Tropical hardwoods are generally preferred for making xylophone bars due to their superior hardness, density, stiffness and its peculiar damping [6, 7]. African blackwood and Brazilian rosewood are preferred for clarinets and oboes due to their high density and a fine grain to obtain an optimal finish of the tube walls and finger holes. For wind instruments the interior surfaces should be smooth and non-porous to reduce viscous losses in the air coloumn. In drums with membranes the supporting structure should be sufficiently strong and rigid. Jackfruit wood is most pre- ferred for Indian tabala and mridangam and a wide variety of stringed instruments like veena and tampura, due its fine grain structure, aesthetics (golden yellow colour) and termite resistance (protection from insects). In general, the best musi- 123