Floor vibration due to occupants and reliability-based design guidelines

Lightweight floors for residential or commercial applications may exhibit annoying levels of vibration under occupancy loading. This paper presents an experimental and analytical study of the vibrational response of wood floors to impact produced by occupants. The results show that, for the analysis of this type of floors, it is necessary to consider the coupled dynamical system of floor and occupants. It is also shown that occupants may be modelled with simple oscillators, and that the dynamic analysis of the coupled system can produce close agreement with tests. Acceptability criteria are used to study design guidelines, combining the variability in floor stiffness with the variability in human tolerance to vibrations. Floors considered use 2 × 8 SPF joists and I-joists. Key words: vibrations, serviceability, occupancy loads, wood floors, reliability.