Edinburgh Napier University

  Developments in composite timber construction have been widely used for forming relatively large-span floors. This has also resulted in undue floor vibrations, causing inconvenience to the occupants and requiring the vibrational response of the structure to be considered in more detail during the design process. The problems associated with vibration of floors are not adequately addressed in the current British Standards. The UK National Annex to Eurocode 5 considers the fundamental natural frequency of the floor, the deflection under a unit point load and the unit impulse velocity response. These design criteria have been analysed in this paper and parameters influencing the vibrational behaviour of the flooring system have been investigated by performing parametric studies on floors built with solid timber joists and engineered I-joists. Regarding fundamental natural frequency and deflection, the results show that the floor span and beam height are the critical parameters and the floors built with I-joists have a poorer vibrational performance.