Assessment of Footfall-induced Vibrations in Timber and Lightweight Composite Floors

In this paper, the footfall-induced vibrations in typical timber and lightweight composite floors in residential buildings are investigated. The two-floor structures have approximately comparable distributed mass and that the transverse flexural stiffnesses of the two structures are not substantially different. An analysis is carried out to assess the floor acceptability of the two structures, based upon derived expressions as well as some design codes and guidelines such as the Eurocode. For the analysis, two cases are considered for each floor structure: a composite action and noncomposite action. It has been shown that use of composite action, under certain conditions, has more advantages than its noncomposite counterpart with respect to the floor acceptability for general residential applications. Moreover, the limitations of the different criteria of the codes, guidelines for assessing floor vibrations in timber and lightweight floor structures, and possible improvements of these criteria are discussed in this paper.