Long-term acoustical performance of underlayments under load

Abstract

It is very common to use some sort of a resilient underlayment under gypsum-based topping products in multi-family construction to improve the airborne and impact acoustical performance. To prove acoustical performance, these products are tested in accordance to the relevant ASTM or ISO standards. An assembly is built and then tested in a short period of time. No evaluation of long-term performance is completed. This presentation will compare the performance of crumb rubber based GenieMat and several different plastic mesh entangled filament based underlayments in four key metrics. The first metric is the steady state creep under load. The second and third metrics are the change in performance in both load versus deflection and load versus natural frequency of the underlayments, pre and post steady state creep. The fourth metric is long term change in impact noise levels under load based on small scale testing similar to published standards.