Prospects for a test procedure for rating floor toppings on joist floors

Abstract

Recently ASTM issued a new test method, E2179, for rating the reduction in impact noise when a floor topping is placed on a concrete slab. E2179 is essentially the same as ISO140-8. Measurements have shown that the reduction in impact noise obtained when a floor topping is placed on a concrete slab is not the same as when the topping is placed on a wooden subfloor supported on joists. To complicate matters, the improvement obtained for a given topping changes when the construction of the joist floor on which it is placed changes. Thus a standard test method with a rigorous definition of a reference joist floor might be created but the measured improvements would not necessarily be applicable to joist floors of different construction. The ISO and ASTM single number ratings for some joist floor systems with toppings do not always give good agreement because of the 8 dB rule that exists in ASTM E989 but is absent in ISO 717-2. This paper will review some of the activities in ASTM and ISO and present some measurement resuts obtained in several laboratories.