FLOOR VIBRATION DUE TO OCCUPANTS AND RELIABILITY-BASED DESIGN GUIDELINES

Lightweight floors for residential or commercial applications may exhi bit annoying levels of vibration under occupancy loading. This paper p resents an experimental and analytical study of the vibrational respon se of wood floors to impact produced by occupants. The results show th at, for the analysis of this type of floors, it is necessary to consid er the coupled dynamical system of floor and occupants. It is also sho wn that occupants may be modelled with simple oscillators, and that th e dynamic analysis of the coupled system can produce close agreement w ith 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 x 8 SPF joists and I-joists.