Numerical Prediction Method for Vibration Characteristics of Steel-Framed Autoclaved Lightweight Aerated Concrete Floor Structures

Abstract

The prediction of floor vibration is of great importance from the viewpoint of accurate prediction of a room’s sound environment. Despite the advantage of low cost, because the density and elasticity of autoclaved lightweight aerated concrete (ALC) panels are much lower than those of reinforced-concrete panels, ALC floor structures suffer from weak sound insulation and require better sound insulation design. However, there have been not yet been any studies of sound insulation improvement of steel-framed ALC floor structures, and it is novel to clarify how the floor-impact-sound characteristics are affected by the panel size and beam structure. In this paper, a finite element analysis was applied to the vibration simulation of an ALC floor structure on a steel-framed structure. The validity of the proposed method was firstly confirmed by comparison with measurement results. Furthermore, by using the validated simulation method, the effect of the arrangement of ALC panels and their supporting steel-framed structure on the vibration characteristics of the whole structure was investigated. It was found that the vibration performance was improved when the number of beams was increased and adjacent ALC floor panels were bonded to each other.

Keywords

• numerical simulation
• FEM
• autoclaved lightweight aerated concrete (ALC)
• structural analysis