The scope of this guide focuses on the design of mass timber floor systems to limit human-induced vibration. The primary performance goal is to help designers achieve a low probability of adverse comment regarding floor vibrations in a manner consistent with the vibration design guides for steel and concrete systems. This includes excitation primarily from human walking as observed by other people in the building. Some treatment of design for sensitive equipment in response to human walking is also discussed. This design guide covers the range of currently available mass timber panels, including cross-laminated timber (CLT) manufactured from either solid sawn or structural composite lumber (SCL) laminations, nail-laminated timber (NLT), dowel laminated timber (DLT) and glue-laminated timber (GLT), as well as their support framework of timber beams.
The target user of this guide is a design professional with working knowledge of mass timber structural design and some background knowledge of structural dynamics as related to floor vibrations. It may be particularly useful to design engineers with limited experience with vibration analysis, experienced multi-material engineers familiar with vibration analysis but unfamiliar with mass timber vibration, and applications engineers assisting manufacturers in the development of solutions and proposals for projects.