The Study on Light Floor Impact Sound Improvement by Void Slab Applied with Surface Covering Materials

Abstract

The living quality of the Taiwanese citizens keeps rising; the improvement of floor impact sound has being carried out into practical project gradually. The void slab, used to be used in huge span building, is very common in housing building. From reference, the void slab represents the one of the latest architectural facilities, which focuses on the noise improvement for the living quality, by its characteristics of rigidity and lightweight. In order to select an appropriate floor covering material, the experimental investigation based on the standard ISO 140-7 and 140-8 should be carried out to experiment the performance of the bare void slab and the covering materials over the slab for discussing the possibility of material application on the void slab. Therefore, in this study, the noise insulating performance of the void slab through the field experiments in the practical condominium-type housing projects will be tested, and the floor impact sound performance of the selected sample of covering materials (teak wood and carpet) applied on the existing void slab will also be shown in this paper. The results show that the void slab presents good effective performance for heavy floor impact sound, but the void slab should be applied with covering materials to demonstrate efficient improvement toward the light floor impact sound, and the performance varies from materials. The researchers expect that the database could provide designers and constructors the reference of the floor covering materials related to the floor impact sound insulation and reduce the time and the costs issue.