Office floor vibrations: evaluation and assessment

Abstract

Excessive levels of vibration in office floors have become a common source of complaint by occupants and building owners in recent years. The need for large open-space working areas, the availability of light and high-strength building materials, the use of computer-aided design and lighter building contents due to paperless offices are the main factors causing the problem. The evaluation and assessment of floor vibrations as related to human perception and comfort are therefore important issues to consider. Several standards and design guides include provisions to address these requirements. The most recent research studies and standards recommend the use of vibration dose value (VDV) for such evaluation, which is believed to provide a consistent and reliable measure of vibration acceptability to humans. Using the results of tests conducted on four different building floors, this paper studies the provisions of the recent standards for the estimated vibration dose value (eVDV) and attempts to clarify their applications. It is found that a vibration duration based on a peak absolute frequency-weighted acceleration of more than 0·015 m/s2 provides consistent evaluations in terms of human reaction to vibration. This paper also compares the provisions of various standards and design guides in terms of building floor vibration acceptability levels. It is concluded that the use of VDV results in a more consistent and less conservative outcome than other criteria such as peak absolute acceleration.