Sound insulation of slabs in dwellings

Abstract

The well-being and sleeping quality of people in dwellings depends on appropriate sound insulation efficiency of building structures. In individual apartments, airborne sound is produced by people talking and music playing, and impact sound is produced by people walking and falling of various objects on the floor. The inter floor slab separating the individual dwellings is intended for airborne and impact noise insulation, so special attention is paid to its design and installation. Since the composition of this structure is primarily determined by the structural requirements, the improvement of the sound insulation performance is mainly carried out by developing the damping interlayer materials. The stone wool plate has been modified reducing the fiber intertwining to obtain a more uniform fiber directivity, thus reducing its dynamic stiffness. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the sound insulation efficiency of inter floor slabs with a new modification of stone wool damping interlayer in comparison with currently used mineral wool products. The experimental measurements in 50-5000 Hz frequency range were performed in construction site (real structures), the single-number quantities – weighted standardized level difference (DnTw) and weighted normalized impact sound pressure level (L‘nW) with living adaption term (C) were determined and compared. The research results demonstrated that the modified stone wool with reduced fiber intertwining and lover organic content used for damping interlayer enables to improve living sound insulation of inter floor slab comparing with existing stone wool materials.