Preventing Annoying Wood Floor Vibrations

Several proposed design criteria for preventing annoying wood floor vibrations are reviewed, and an additional criterion is proposed. Recent research results that validate the proposed design criterion are reported. The recent research includes laboratory constructed floors, floors in buildings under construction, and floors in occupied buildings. Some of the floors included in the “under construction” or “unoccupied” results were revisited after the buildings were occupied to determine if the occupancy loads affected the proposed design criterion. In this paper, the terms “occupied” and “unoccupied” refer to whether furniture and other live loads typically associated with living in the structure are present or not. The results validate that if the stiffness of the floors is sufficient to keep the fundamental frequency of the floor system above 15 Hz for unoccupied floors, and above 14 Hz for occupied floors, acceptable vibration will be obtained. The design criterion is intended to be used during the design of buildings with allowable design properties to ensure performance of the floors after construction.