SémiLAUM - 09 février

Le 9 février 2021

Impact noise is a major sound transmission problem in concrete buildings that severely affects the quality of life of residents. Impact sound is a special kind of structure-borne sound. There are several sources of impact sound in buildings, but footsteps are considered the main one. The impact insulation of a concrete floor can be improved by the use of floating floor constructions.

Commonly, a floating floor consists of an upper panel and a resilient layer, which is in turn laid on the concrete structural slab. A floating floor has a fundamental natural frequency that is determined by the mass per unit area of the floating slab and the total dynamic stiffness per unit area of the resilient support. Experimental evidence has shown that dynamic stiffness is closely related to impact sound insulation. However, an underlayment layer behaves as a viscoelastic material.

The material can also behave either as a linear or nonlinear material when deformed by an oscillatory force. The main fundamentals of the impact noise, the improvement in impact sound insulation by floating floors, measurement techniques, and materials used as underlayments will be discussed in this seminar. Recent research results about nanostructured underlayments and sound insulation provided by typical lightweight laminate flooring will also be presented.