Advanced Wood-Based Solutions for Mid-Rise and High-Rise Construction: In-Situ Testing of the Brock Commons 18-Storey Building for Vibration and Acoustic performances
This report addresses serviceability issues of tall wood buildings focusing on their vibration and sound insulation performance. The sound insulation and vibration performance may not affect the building’s safety, but affects the occupants’ comfort and the proper operation of the buildings and the function of sensitive equipment, consequently the acceptance of the midrise and tall wood buildings in market place. Lack of data, knowledge and experience of sound and vibration performance of tall wood buildings is one of the issues related to design and construction of tall wood buildings.
The measured and estimated values should also be correlated with actual experiences of the occupants in the building if such information is obtained, for example, through a survey.
FPInnovations has been conducting a series of field testing on wood mid-rise and tall wood buildings, including this 4-story mass timber building in Vancouver, to measure their dynamic performance. The general objectives of the field measurements of the building wind-induced vibrations and sound insulation performance are to develop improved knowledge and assemble a database of wind-induced vibration and sound insulation performance of mid-rise and tall-wood buildings. Ambient vibration and ASTM acoustic testing were performed to measure the dynamic performance of the building including the building natural frequencies, damping ratios and mode shapes. It was found that the measured first natural frequency and damping ratio of this building are overall similar to those measured from other 4-storey buildings that have exhibited good wind-induced vibration performance. The measured apparent impact insulation performance (AIIC) of 58 is considered as a satisfactory sound insulation performance indicator according to FPInnovations’ field experience about occupant satisfaction. It is believed that the test results will help the designers to obtain insight into the construction details of the building and the correlations between the details and the final performances in terms of building dynamic and sound insulation performance. Furthermore, the test results provided reliable data on the vibration and the sound insulation performance of the selected floor assemblies. The measured AIIC, building natural frequencies, and damping ratios can provide technical reference to architects and engineers to verify their designs and the design tools used.
FPInnovations has been conducting a series of field testing on mid-rise and tall-wood buildings including this 6-storey wood-frame building in Victoria to measure their dynamic performance.The general objectives of the field measurements of the building wind-induced vibrations and sound insulation performance are: to develop improved knowledge and assemble a database of wind-induced vibration and sound insulation performance of mid-rise and tall-wood buildings, especially prefabricated wood construction; to verify the application of the NBCC design method for wind-induced vibration control for wood construction; and to verify the design tools used by designers for controlling the wind-induced vibrations and noise in mid-rise and tall-wood buildings.
Three performance attributes of a building for serviceability performance are 1) vibration of the whole building structure, 2) vibration of the floor system, typically in regards to motions in a localized area within the entire floor plate, and 3) sound insulation performance of the wall and floor assemblies. Serviceability performance of a building is important as it affects the comfort of its occupants and the functionality of sensitive equipment as well. Many physical factors influence these performances. Designers use various parameters to account for them in their designs and different criteria to manage these performances.
The overall objectives of this stud were threefold:
1. The vibration performance tests were to experimentally determine the dynamic properties, e.g., natural frequencies (periods) and damping ratios of the WIDC building through ambient vibration testing on:
o the bare structure in 2014,
o the finished building upon completion of the construction with occupants in 2015, and
o the finished building after 3 years of service in 2017.
2. The floor vibration tests were to evaluate vibration performance of the innovative CLT floor based on the bare floor fundamental natural frequency, 1 kN static deflection, and subjective evaluation.
3. The sound transmission tests were to determine the Apparent Sound Transmision Class (ASTC) and Apparent Impact Insulation Class (AIIC) of selected innovative CLT floor assemblies.
