Vibration Serviceability of Building Floors: Performance Evaluation of Contemporary Design Guidelines
Publication: Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 33, Issue 2
Abstract
The drive toward innovative designs of structural systems assisted by more efficient materials has resulted in ever more slender spans and lighter weight constructions. This has also been accompanied by the growing trend of open-plan floor developments with fewer internal partitions. As a consequence, concerns are being increasingly expressed over excessive human-induced vibrations under normal in-service conditions. These floors might be considered as failing to meet the vibration serviceability criterion, even though in some cases they might satisfy the requirements of existing vibration design guidelines and tolerance limits. Thus, this paper outlines a thorough back analysis of three tested full-scale floors with finite-element modeling to evaluate the reliability of contemporary guidelines. It is demonstrated that current forms of design guidance could require significant improvements in the key aspects of walking load models, response prediction, and threshold tolerance in order to more reliably predict actual vibration response and corresponding vibration assessment.
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Acknowledgments
The financial support for this research was provided by Qatar National Research Fund, a member of the Qatar Foundation, via the National Priorities Research Program (NPRP), Project NPRP8-836-2-353. The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.
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Published In
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 33 • Issue 2 • April 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 27, 2017
Accepted: Sep 28, 2018
Published online: Jan 29, 2019
Published in print: Apr 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Jun 29, 2019
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