Impact sound insulation of a lightweight laminate floor resting on a thin underlayment material above a concrete slab

Abstract

Impact noise is a major sound transmission problem in concrete buildings that severely affects the quality of life of residents. The impact insulation of a concrete floor can be improved by the use of floating floor constructions. Commonly, a floating floor consists of an upper panel and a resilient layer, which is in turn laid on the concrete structural slab. Lightweight laminate flooring has become one of the most common floor surfaces in many countries. It is not only used in new dwellings and modern concrete multistorey buildings, but also to replace allergy-causing carpeted floors. However, the improvement in impact sound insulation of lightweight laminated floors has not received much attention. This study aims to report the improvement in impact sound insulation of a typical laminated floor resting on different commercially available thin underlayment materials above a concrete structural slab. Although all the floating floor combinations exhibited different impact sound insulation performance as a function of frequency, the standardized single number ratings described in ISO 717-2 were almost identical. However, environmentally friendly fibrous continuous layers tested in this study reported better impacting sound performance compared with polymeric materials. The force transmissibility-based theory is applied and revised to properly predict the experimental results for this type of floating floor well: an empirical stiffness-dependent formula is derived. In general, the experimental results of the improvement of impact sound insulation are in close agreement with the results obtained with this empirical formula.