Apparent Impact Sound Insulation Performance of Continuous Floating Concrete Toppings on Mass Timber Slab Floors
Publication: Journal of Architectural Engineering
Volume 30, Issue 4
Abstract
Mass timber panels including cross-laminated timber (CLT), dowel-laminated timber (DLT), and nail-laminated timber (NLT) are used increasingly as floor slabs in mass timber buildings and hybrid timber buildings. The sound insulation performance of bare mass timber structural floors is insufficient due to their lightweight and relatively high bending stiffness. Floating concrete toppings are commonly applied for improved sound insulation performance with an elastic interlayer. The effect of different elastic interlayers and thickness of concrete toppings on improving the impact sound insulation performance was investigated experimentally according to ASTM standards in this study. The results showed that with the same elastic layer, thicker concrete toppings resulted in better impact sound insulation performance with a higher apparent impact insulation class (AIIC). However, by increasing the concrete thickness from 38 to 50 mm and to 70 mm, the improvement of AIIC between two thicknesses was only within 3, and a significant improvement up to 9 was observed with a 100-mm-thick concrete topping. In general, elastic interlayers with lower dynamic stiffness values performed better; however, the performance was product dependent though the apparent dynamic stiffness was measured using the same standard method. Moreover, with the same panel thickness and wood species, a bare DLT floor provided higher AIIC (35) than a bare CLT (21), but each mass timber floor with the same interlayer and floating concrete topping had the same impact sound attenuation performance. The ISO empirical prediction equation overestimated the impact sound attenuation of floating concrete toppings on mass timber floors.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The financial support from BC Forest Innovation Invest – Wood First program, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) is greatly acknowledged. We acknowledge the in-kind contributions from StructureCraft, Structurlam, Pliteq, Rothoblaas, Getzner, Soprema, and KRAIBURG Relastec, as well as the technical supports from Wood Innovation Research Lab at UNBC.
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© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Feb 15, 2024
Accepted: Jul 1, 2024
Published online: Sep 18, 2024
Published in print: Dec 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Feb 18, 2025
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