Evaluation of Floor Vibrations Induced by Walking Barefoot in Heavyweight Buildings

Abstract

Floor vibrations induced by humans walking barefoot were investigated in heavyweight buildings. Six floating floors with different floor structures and thick resilient isolators were built in laboratories with the same dimensions and boundary conditions. Subjective tests were performed to assess the vibration serviceability of the floor structures. In the first test, subjects were asked to walk across a floor and then rate the intensity of the vibrations, and the acceptability and serviceability of the floors. In the second test, subjects were seated on a chair in the middle of the floor and asked to rate the floor vibrations when a walker passed by the subjects. Floor vibrations induced by human walking were analysed using peak acceleration, root-mean-square (r.m.s.) acceleration, and the vibration dose value (VDV), with four frequency weighting functions (Wb, Wk, Wg, and Wm). Significant differences in the measured floor vibrations were found across the floor structures with greater floor vibration leading to greater perceived vibration intensity, lower acceptability, and lower serviceability. The VDV was correlated with perceptions of floor vibration when used with all four frequency weighting functions. The impact noise induced by walking did not influence subjective evaluations of floor vibration. A heavy/soft impact source (a standard impact source) provided a useful prediction of differences between the perception of the vibration on different floors.

A method for evaluating the comfort during blasting vibration based on energy absorbing principle

“…Vibration comfort refers to the degree of external vibration interference as perceived by people in daily life or at work. Currently, studies on vibration comfort focus mainly on the vibrations caused by buildings and means of transport like vehicles and ships, as well as ocean waves and sea ice (Waddington et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2015; Morales et al., 2016; Nieto et al., 2016; Schiavi et al., 2016). Blasting vibration has the features of high amplitude, high frequency, and short duration, which are different characteristics than the vibrations listed above.…”

New Polish guidelines regarding human exposure to vibrations in buildings

“…In [12] authors took four weighting functions (Wb, Wk, Wg, and Wm) into account in their VDV analysis. The Wg function is the weighting curve for the horizontal directions.…”

Impact of Structural Parameters on the Auditory Perception of Musical Sounds in Closed Spaces: An Experimental Study

“…Their subjective experiment was on-site and evaluated some parameters such as reverberant, resounding, and balanced by grading. Lee [15] conducted two subjective experiments for evaluating floor vibrations induced by walking barefoot in heavyweight buildings, one was rating the intensity of the vibrations and the acceptability and serviceability of the floors when the subject himself walked across, and the other was to rating the floor vibrations when a walker passed by the subject. Kurt [16] conducted subjective evaluations to compare driving experience in real cars and virtual environment.…”