Abstract

The development of engineered wood products and the environmental benefits of timber over conventional building materials has led to an increased interest in the use of timber for the construction of multi-storey buildings. Timber has a high strength-to-weight ratio making it structurally efficient for long-span floor applications (a common practice in commercial buildings). However, the low mass of such floors makes them more susceptible to walking-induced vibrations compared to heavier floors such as those made from concrete. In fact, when designing long-span timber floors, dynamic performance criteria tends to govern the design rather than strength. Unfortunately, there is a lack of specific vibration design guidance for long-span timber floors with much of the current criteria based on tests of short-span timber joist floors in residential applications. In addition, there is uncertainty as to how accurately other vibration design guides, mainly used for concrete and steel-concrete composite floors, predicts and assesses floor performance of long-span timber floors.

This thesis addresses this gap by investigating the dynamic behaviour of a long-span timber floor through both experimental and numerical methods. Impact hammer and walking tests with two subjects were performed on a 9 m span ribbed-deck floor which consists of a laminated veneer lumber (LVL) panel glued and screwed to three LVL web members, forming one cassette. The influence of various boundary conditions and cassette-to-cassette connections on the modal properties and floor response were explored. A numerical model of a single cassette, calibrated to measured results through model updating, was used to investigate three human walking load models including the deterministic modelling approach adopted in current vibration design guides. In addition, a numerical model representing the cassette-to-cassette connection was developed and updated using measured results of double cassette tests. These details were adopted in a multi-cassette floor model, based on the dimensions of a typical commercial building floor grid, to investigate the influence of common design parameters on modal properties and floor response.

Details

Title
Dynamic Behaviour of Long-Span Timber Ribbed-Deck Floors
Author
Basaglia, Bella Maria
Publication year
2019
Publisher
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
ISBN
9798382077741
Source type
Dissertation or Thesis
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3039731539
Copyright
Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.