Experimental study on reduction of floor impact sound in wooden buildings

Abstract

In recent years, wooden buildings have been attracting attention from the viewpoint of promoting sustainable construction through the use of wood. In Japan, laws promoting the use of wood have been enacted and the number of wooden apartment buildings is increasing. However, the structural members used in wooden buildings are lighter and less rigid than those in reinforced concrete buildings, so sound insulation performance is generally poor. In particular, it is difficult to achieve good insulation performance against heavy floor impacts. In this paper, we describe a study that was conducted for the purpose of reducing floor impact sound in wooden buildings. The ability of two damping materials developed by the authors to reduce floor impact sound was tested. One is a damping material for floors that acts like tuned mass dampers (TMDs) to reduce floor vibrations. The other is a damping material for ceilings that is inserted above the ceiling panels to increase ceiling damping and attenuate vibration. These countermeasures were experimentally tested in a building constructed using the wooden frame wall method (two-by-four system) and their ability to reduce floor impact sound was confirmed.