Development of an experimental protocol for floor vibration assessment

Lightweight steel-framed floors sometimes possess levels of vibration, caused by pedestrian movement, found to be objectionable to the occupants. The techniques of modal analysis are useful to experimentally extract the parameters these floor systems, with the goal of better understanding the dynamic properties of the floor. From this information, better design procedures can be developed to aid engineers during the design process. This paper presents a protocol for obtaining the modal parameters of a floor system, and describes the effects of variables such as excitation type and placement; averaging; and placement of accelerometers relative to the structural members. With this, informed decisions with respect to test accuracy and setup speed can be made when designing the experiment. An in-place experimental floor is used to determine the effects of the variables.